Going Down
by Piloter
Summary: What happens when World War 2 goes Cold and out to space? You wind up some decades later with the Post-Terran Mining Corporation and their economic stranglehold on solar system commerce...and a sudden problem with all their facilities being under unknown control. Enter one grizzled mercenary of a Material Defender to try and unravel it all. Descent 1/2 in pre-First Contact Trek.
1. Down to Earth

**THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS AND HAS NOT SEEN ANY EDITING PASSES-WHICH IT WILL NEED.**

Going Down

A novel by Alaric Toft

_"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."_ – Theodore Roosevelt

Dedicated to Pam M, without whose cheerful co-conspiring over many years the universe wouldn't be nearly as vast nor nearly as well-sorted.

Thanks to:

Interplay ("By Gamers, For Gamers" still moves hearts and minds.)

Parallax (Six degrees of creative freedom.)

Gene Roddenberry (A little less idealism and a little more human nature and a little more development ought to be interesting.)

Peter Telep (We may not use the same kind of whole cloth but we both needed just as much.)

Z (Emotional support and limitless patience.)

Kristin (Calling an alternate-history bluff with three simple words and a resulting profoundly pleasing timeline harmonization.)

Apogee (Fleet Admiral Yoshiro's playful banter all those years ago sparked a leading lady.)

And last but not least, all the hotel clerks who let me into hot tubs at 3 AM with a bathing suit, a laptop, and a frozen dinner and asked no questions.

**Author's note:**

There are some necessary high-tech handwaves here, of course, as marrying Star Trek with a 1990s video game and then attempting to force-feed the resulting unholy hybrid enough science to straighten it out again while preserving the core possibility of the story is NOT a straightforward endeavor. Nevertheless there is more attention paid to physics, logic, and repercussions here than in either of the originals. That said, a surprising number of the concepts were tested and proven in the 1960s and 1970s-Project Pluto, SNAP-10A, etc. NASA has a few excellent freely available monographs on human G tolerance. The US Navy is currently planning railgun and laser deployment on its next frigates and hypervelocity missiles and drones are already here.

**Author's note for FanFiction readers:**

Grammatical constructions that seem absurd, obscenely inaccurate, or just peculiar derive directly from the highly idiomatic and fragmentary nature of familiar communication between very (very!) flawed entities. Cursory observation of specialists at work, especially those in a blue-collar profession, will reveal similar patterns and frankly I had my fill of reading the 'dueling monologue' style by the end of high school. I _have_ tried to vary and space out the profanity a bit more than it is generally exchanged...these are highly articulate specialists, after all. As for adult themes or detailed descriptions of violence, if the implications get to you then you're old enough to handle them. Fuel burns, lasers cut, explosives explode, metal bends, sanity leaks, smokes and burns off, the laws of physics claim victims-especially Newton's Third Law, applied in a much more general sense-and not everybody has happiness and butterflies in their pasts. Some _may_ legitimately have sunshine and kittens, however.

If you came here looking for trigger warnings, I subscribe to Aristotle's view of purgative, relieving catharsis rather than Plato's view that drama was emotionally evocative in order to permit an audience to wallow in negative emotion. This "argument" is older than you'd think.

My primary purpose of archiving this tale as I write it isn't for publicity-well, perhaps slightly-but rather to keep another copy safe. In basic form, this idea has been kicking around since I played the original game back in 1994 and has been written three times now, each time considerably better. The first form is safely lost, the second exists but shan't see the light of day. Most notably it was written on a calculator (TI-92+) when I was supposed to be paying attention to lectures and I was surprised I reached ~90 pages with it. This iteration has gotten to over three hundred pages and I harbor no delusions about my ability to surpass it with a fourth version...so I preserve the third via multiple avenues. When I finally discharge this gigantic spiralling nightmare from my brain then no doubt there will be an equally massive editing pass. As-is, this doesn't really hit its stride until past the first couple chapters and the split narration starts.

For the curious...Book 1 was largely written under the influence of excessive travel and my preexisting music collection. Book 2 drew heavily on internet radio for background inspiration, mostly electro house. Book 3 was largely motivated by internet radio and in particular Bar Rockin' Blues which has introduced me to some phenomenal artists, driven some Amazon purchases, and provided surprisingly fertile creative and chapter-quote ground.

Updates will be somewhat erratic but the story will not be abandoned barring something taking away my ability or intelligence (debate the presence of either of those as you please). I like to think I've fired all my Chekov's Guns. Certainly on the couple occasions I've read start-to-finish and forgotten what I set up before, it's surprised me that they just keep going off.

Thank you for taking the time to read, if you do. If not, thanks for taking the time to consider reading it. I always felt the official novels strayed a little further from the spirit of the game than I was comfortable with...but I've gone and strayed just as far.

**Technical notes for fellow geeks (SPOILERS):**

As alluded to above, Star Trek is built on the Space Is The Ocean trope from the get-go. With Descent, a game very much of its era, the players ought to consider themselves lucky to get seven briefing screens in lieu of a couple optional manual paragraphs. Subspace no-lag comms and sensors, the entire concept of warp drive, and shielding are functional tenets of Trek...and it seems that comms and sensors work instantly in Descent as well or Dravis would be trying to reach MD1032 from several hours behind. That said they're damned difficult to reconcile with reality in a way that makes any degree of sense. We are seeing the prequels to Starfleet emerge in this timeframe. First Contact will be very different. I've heavily drawn on the shields-as-particle-reservoirs theory propounded over at the force dot net...because it seems a logical way to reconcile the two depictions. (And enables the possibility of the iconic shield globe actually being FOUND in one of these facilities.) The bubble-shaped as a warp bubble will eventually need to be shaped-is a _very_ crude first approximation of what will become impulse drive...but first you need the warp engines to alter the relativistic mass of the ship. THEN you can use deuterium-powered exhaust as a MHD/MPD thrusting system...oh yeah, and when you have that kind of power to burn, you can throw down the structural integrity field to solve spaceframe limitations, and some inertial dampers to solve internal G issues. We're not quite there yet or space would be considerably smaller and the element of significant time passing while you try and get there would be utterly lost. Achieving a feasible SSTO airframe that is as aerodynamically dirty as a Pyro-GX requires truly obscene handwavium in materials and specific impulse (especially since it's got to function interplanetary and without topoffs). To say nothing of the ship's computer...but there are canon precedents for both the method and the medium. I'm sure I've still missed a lot but at base this is still a Man Vs Nature Campbellian conflict and I don't believe I'm a good enough author to preserve the story and elements of both canons and get much harder science than I have. At least I haven't erred on the side of Lensman-ism, entertaining though it is.

For fans of the games, the Descent 1 ending and opening/ending of Descent 2 will be largely preserved, albeit with a large change of implications. Descent 3 is not mentioned for good and obvious reasons. I reject the opening cutscene and the protagonist. Amusingly, I can no longer play Descent or Descent 2. They make me wretchedly motion sick and the following adventure has gotten me expecting lasers to be hitscan and the Vulcan to act like the Gauss if you let off the trigger. To say nothing of slight guilt at using the plasma cannon or a mega missile-this will become clear in later chapters.

Yes, I've taken certain liberties with the story of Descent, yes, but whereas the original was rather minimalist I like where it's gone. Also, trying to assign real-world functions to random swooping level geometries created for gameplay is not always possible. Neither is meticulously chronicling each and every mine's exploration and neutralization because that's not an arc, that's a straight line. In large part Peter Telep's novels inspired a reaction of 'wait, that's not how it happened at _all_' and here we have an alternate take. If you really feel that I've butchered something important, please do try one of your own-and I most sincerely wish you the very best of luck.

Book 1: Going Down

Chapter 1: Down To Earth

Clouds appear

and bring to men a chance to rest

from looking at the moon.

-Matsuo Basho

It was 9 AM when he finally opened his eyes, stirred to troubled wakefulness by a night of sweating terror that the alcohol's imparted sluggishness had kept him mired in. The last of the fading images-blackness, stark shadows on a cratered plain and vivid green splatters, drifting endlessly-stuck in the back of his mind for long moments as he threw off the stained and clammy silken sheets. Morning had come, although the sky was as black as nightfall still, and as scarred hands gripped the windowsill for support he stared heedlessly out onto the busy cityscape. There was a certain subdued nature to the ebb and flow of the cars and trucks in transit lanes high and low, and Brazilian flags flew everywhere. Today, every human across the solar system within range of communications from Earth-perhaps even the crews of the rumored Nazi battlewagons, supposedly lying silent in wait for a century out beyond the colony worlds-was a Brazilian. A lip curled up, exposing the corner of a pointed canine tooth, as he wondered just how many people in total considered themselves Brazilians today and if the total number matched the number of vaporized bodies when the city of Rio de Janeiro had evaporated under the deliberate lashing of an out-of-control petawatt power beam from the transmitters on the Moon, linked together in a fashion that ought to have been impossible. The link had been erased by the grossly disproportionate and nearly immediate military response, and along with the link the entire colony that had sprung up around the mine, power station, and transmitter farm. The airborne dust and debris from the crater of the city as well as the dislodged chunks of moon rock and colonists reentering the atmosphere would make for firey and dark nights of the days. Perhaps even another ice age. None of it concerned him except at a theoretical level, because now one hundred percent of the people he was closest to in the world were quite unmistakably dead.

With a groan he pushed himself upright and turned away from the window, hands clutching his head in an effort to hold the contents in. Yesterday he had been out on the town when the newscasters began their reports. Tabs were forgotten, consumption something one did by habit as one watched in horror at the footage. It was hard to grasp the enormity of the thing-like being an ant when a child focuses the sun on your colony. Some said the death toll was already theorized to be in the hundreds of millions. Others were already calling it an extinction level event. For all that Jerome was concerned, humanity could go hang. Through the headache drifted the vision of the last time he'd seen his parents, two days before the event. They'd invited him and his choice of companions...although everybody knew who it was going to be...to their place on the beach on Rio for an 'unforgettable barbeque' sometime in the next week, Raspberry already in her sundress and chef's apron that showed off her tail so well and Thomas busily chopping wood in the background, old asteroid miner muscles laughing at mere trees to split. It was the blackest of humor, in retrospect, but nobody would forget the recent barbeque for a very long time. As he blearily glanced around the sparsely furnished shipping container that served as his apartment his eye fell upon the quietly blinking red light at the base of the communicator. It was a bit hard to make out in the grey dimness that was all that would be daylight for some time now until the ashes were rained from the air. Two lights. One light. Three lights. They danced, splitting and merging with reckless abandon as he stared blearily at them, attempting to by sheer willpower force them to become one light. Nobody called on that line unless it was important. And if it was important, why hadn't she...

A soft feminine throat-clearing floated through the air, and he felt the light pressure of fingers on his shoulder. His skin tingled, as it always did, at that so very unconventional manifestation and manipulation of raw energy, but nevertheless he leaned back onto what felt like a female torso with a sigh. It wasn't exactly supple, but there was enough give and the contours were right, and who cared if it made hairs stand on end? Any comfort was welcome, and it was more than he wanted to do to look at his shoulder and see no flesh resting on it, or look behind him and be reminded that his companion had to choose between being visible or being felt. For now, she was there, and she understood well enough. Still...the light was blinking. And, since he'd done all his banking in Rio with antiquated paper funding and no electronic records, he was broke. And a blinking light usually meant a job. And keeping his companion fed and healthy took a considerable investment. He patted the ghostly touch on his shoulder, reluctantly leaning forward once more and reaching for the communicator.

_"Don't bother..."_

She of the fingers and torso and theoretical message screening—along with so much else-spoke softly behind him, the voice coming from a point roughly congruent with where a head on the invisible torso-shaped forcefield would have been perched. Normally annoyingly cheerful, for once Jenny's contralto was smoky and low, colored with grief.

_"It's PTMC. No, listen!"_

He had already opened his mouth to deny wanting any involvement with the military-industrial conglomerate that had made a virtual slave of his father, but her tone was sharp enough and her track record sufficiently impeccable that he closed it again, hissing in the back of his throat in distaste.

_"Put your claws away, love."_

She chided him.

_"They want a good percentage of their operations destroyed. Full immunity, eight-figure retainer, unrestricted weaponry, full resupply contracts. I know you feel like shit, but..."_

She trailed off, running fingers—or at least, without looking, what felt enough like them to get the point across-gently down his back.

Jerome stood up uneasily, wobbling but staying more or less upright thanks to the eighth of him that was apparently feline. Not for the first time he damned the early programs of genetic experimentation once both the Axis and Allies had taken their little skirmish into orbit. Raspberry might have joked for the ten thousandth time that choosing to raise a 'man-kitten' proved she was an insane half-cat Nazi superweapon, but he still would have preferred to take his chances with being fully human. Post-Terran Mining Corporation? It was every bit the equal of Boeing, or Lockheed-Martin, or Kuat Drive Yards as far as size and funding went. They must have mines on a score of worlds and colonies supporting them...they paid next to nothing for good work, but would hire anybody competent at the lowest levels of their operations, the everpresent turnover and occupational deaths meaning there was always a place open. Men were cheap. Machinery was cheap. And as one of the biggest defense contractors and suppliers, with a stranglehold on the vertical chain, they could buy a lot of both. And now they wanted their operations removed on an eight-figure scale? It didn't make sense. He shook his head in hungover confusion, padding to the bathroom and running a hand through his stubble and short whiskers. For that kind of money, you could pick up a lot of cheap women, a lot of expensive whiskey, plenty of places to live, retire comfortably on your island, and pay to be very well forgotten indeed, no matter your past. But what kind of insane bastard would contract to wipe out that many facilities? It'd take massive firepower, it'd take time, it'd take...Christ, to do it right would take a destroyer, or a small flotilla of them!

Almost silently he muttered aloud "Dad'd be proud. Get paid to break their toys." Thomas had spent most of a lifetime working for PTMC out in the asteroid belt, driving himself with inhuman ferocity to be able to pay for air and food and to buy his leased ship outright. He'd found Mom out there, under circumstances that had been kept very quiet by everybody involved. Declaring one on all official documents and paying for supplies for a crew of two, much less making enough to eventually retire, hadn't been an easy process and by the time Jerome was old enough to listen all the tolerance and patience for bullshit had long since been burned out of the elder Corbell. He'd always told a young Jerome the truth, saying life was too unpredictably short to waste time in lies, and from the truths that had been remembered the repeated consensus, inescapable and endlessly reinforced by every other source, that PTMC was humanity's biggest bureaucracy to date and therefore a rotten bunch of overpaid underresponsible monkeys with a stranglehold on outsystem mining and most of the military contracts.

Water splashed in the sink as he held his face under it, spluttering and trying to bring coherent thought back about more than the sheer number of tentacles the prospective client might have, metaphorically speaking. Hopefully. When he straightened up again, a towel hung in midair, draped over an invisible cylindrical shape. As he took it, mopping at himself, the image of the young woman faded in. She was pale-featured and strikingly pretty, elfin you might say if you had fast enough reflexes to dodge the inevitable following swat. Her large eyes were puffy as if she had been crying as well, with disheveled long straight hair hanging down over half her face. Her skin was blue, her eyes blue, her hair blue, the entire insubstantial image of his long-time companion, lover, and friend hung in the air projected in a gently glowing tinge of blue, down to the little spaceships on her pajamas—Allied designs from 1972, he thought absently, doing battle with a German fleet. Saturn's rings and the curve of the planet were nicely rendered on her also nicely rendered rear curves, and it never ceased to amaze Jerome how detailed and accurate she made her image. Of course, it was one of the less dangerous ways she spent her time.

_"Hey, wasn't my place to say that it would seem like a good tribute to 'em..."_

Jenny said, with half a grin tilting elfin lips upward for a moment. She'd heard. She heard everything. It went with the job, and the tiny microphone buried in his mastoid bone acted as an amplifier and secured transmitter for subvocalized speech so they could talk clandestinely. There were times Jerome would've sworn that she nevertheless picked up on thoughts that never even made it to his mouth at all.

_"But you know Mom would've told him to do it for free."_

She finished her comment a little sadly.

Reluctantly, Jerome nodded. It was true enough, and he had to admit to himself that his own horrified grief and upsetness needed some sort of useful outlet, some way to lash out. Something to destroy, something to bear the brunt of outraged human—despite the cat—fury. And PTMC property might be worth the bid.

"But…"

He stepped toward the shower, the knobs turning before he even reached them as Jenny's image flickered out of sight for a moment, then back in once she'd stopped moving things.

"Why us?"

Off came the briefs, unselfconsciously, and the curtain slid closed. As soon as he was out of sight, Jenny's image vanished again and there came a series of noises from the kitchen.

"_Well, I told them the truth as your secretary."_

Came her voice, positioned from where her head had just been for logical ease of conversation.

"_We just happen to have an assault-converted mining ship at our disposal. Your record and certifications and family association were why they called you in the first place, but that can't have hurt. Incidentally, don't drop the soap, this was an urgent cattle call to come to their orbital office station….as of four hours ago."_

The faintest hint of mischief had crept back into her voice, never suppressable for long. Jerome swore feelingly and the buzz of an electric razor echoed hollowly around the bathroom.

"In that case, I'll eat on the way up…throw that sludge in something with a good lid."

A mocking scoff answered him.

"_You think I'd waste good caffeinated sludge on you? Happens I found some spray-in seat foam, figured this soon after waking up you'd never taste the difference!"_

Jerome thought about it for a moment, carefully shaving around his vestigial whiskers—even a near-miss would give him quite the headache and he didn't need the current one worsened, not when heading into the lion's den—and finally grunted in assent. She was right. He'd probably only notice when it glued his mouth together.

"Moving on…"

"_Hah!"_

She crowed in victory and interruption, his change of subject only confirming her comment.

"…what would you recommend for a monkeysuit? Full dress?"

It was the young woman's turn to pause, although activity in the kitchen didn't stop. He wasn't looking, and eggs and coffee were too tricky to be left to their own devices.

"_Hnnn…"_

She crooned to herself softly, quizzically, thinking aloud.

"…_no. Too flashy. Anything this prompt, they'll value the brains for subtlety more than the all-in showiness. Plus they'd never want anybody who looked like they were coming in on terms of equality enough to bargain, not unless there weren't any other qualified candidates. Bet you a backrub against a waxing we see one of those little tinpot dictators with a scrap-metal capital ship heading out in a high dudgeon because their acres of broccoli weren't enough?"_

Jerome laughed derisively at that, the razor stopping and blending into the hum of a powered toothbrush. His speech was indistinct but they'd been communicating under worse conditions for a great many years.

"S'unfr wagrr—bssides, Mm brwk! No wax money."

He spat out the toothpaste and grimaced at the length of his nails and the filth beneath them, shutting off the water and stepping out of the cramped shower cubicle. Jets of hot air came to life from above and below, although he still started drying himself the old fashioned way while he danced from foot to foot above the rushing currents.

"So you think the decent jumpsuit with all the unit decorations and none of the dangly decorations, then?"

Naked and more or less damp, he jogged back into the bedroom, deliberately speeding up to try and burn the last of the hangover away. The closet hissed open, a carelessly stored helmet tumbling from atop the piles of Jane's Space Gunnery supplements that were stacked unevenly across the top shelving. Poised reflexively on the balls of his feet, Jerome sprang back in next to no time, a hand lashing out to swat the helmet midair with a loud thud onto the bed where it tumbled to rest against his lumpy pillow.

"_Hmm?"_

Came Jenny's curious voice, as the kitchen noises ceased for a moment. When he looked back, ears twitching in annoyance, she was projected there in little more than an oversized tee shirt and an apron that said "CLEAN THE OPTICS OF THE COOK", gazing cutely up at the piles of magazines and simulating a blush.

"_I only read them for the articles, I swear!"_

And with a giggle, she vanished again, the noise of frying bacon crescendoing from the other room. Jerome shook his head, by now thoroughly distracted from the events of the day before for the time being, and reached up to pull down his black jumpsuit. It unfolded at a shake, neatly pressed creases still sharp and the small forest of decorations a kaleidoscope of colors in a discreet patch above the right breast. The insignia on the left shoulder, gleamingly bright even in the subdued light of the apartment, marked the wearer as not only a member in good standing of the Mercenary Guild—entitled to possession and use of vessels and technologies normally reserved for the military, providing the paperwork was in order—but as a graduate from the Io Institute, the school reserved for the best talent and largest backing funds. Respectfully, Jerome ran his thumb along the bottom pennant set with two stylized Is. It had taken Thomas and Raspberry every credit they'd ever saved and then some to get him sent there instead of boarding school. He would be the first to admit his youth had been somewhat troubled, and also that the Institute had quite possibly raised as many new troubles as it solved, nevertheless…it was something to be proud of. Something to be less proud of was getting hit in the back of the head with a thrown pair of rolled up socks.

"_I don't hear you dressing in there!"_

Called Jenny's voice liltingly, from the general area of the kitchen.

"_And when I don't hear you dressing, bitching, or snoring in the morning—"_

"I don't snore!"

Came the indignant interruption.

"_My delicious ass you don't, I have recordings, edited to the melodies of popular tunes—you're probably standing there morosely contemplating your sad, sad life. Cram your hairy self into that little sparkling spandex number, we're gonna go out there and blow some shit up!"_

Jerome began to swear, then caught himself. She _had_ just called that out as one of the other options likely…reluctantly, he acknowledged that a perfectly good sulk ought to be put off for a better time and shimmied into the jumpsuit. It did sparkle. It hadn't the last time he wore it. As he struggled to zip it up the long way, he contemplated what he would do to his companion with a paintbrush and a can of something garish. It was hard to think of something she wouldn't like, or the process of applying, and it was with a certain degree of annoyance that he let the idea go. Oh, she was practically impossible to ruffle! Nevertheless, with a little more spare time something would inevitably come to mind.

"Yeah, and what about you? Are you dressed and ready to go?"

He shot back, weakly enough. The only answer that came back was a loud blown raspberry. Concentrating for a moment as he sat down to pull on the thin-soled silvered boots that completed the outfit, he could hear a series of mechanical sputters from underneath the floor, like the coughing of a great metal predator.

"Apparently you're not ready."

Jerome commented with a certain degree of smugness, but paused as he heard the quiet high-pitched whine start and quickly spool up beyond human and even part-cat hearing.

"Turbine troubles?"

It wasn't smug any more but rather concerned. Boots on, he turned around to get his helmet, suddenly peering straight into Jenny's frowning face. She had changed her projection into a matching jumpsuit with duplicates of all the 'fruit salad' rendered in various shades of blue as with everything else and was standing next to the edge of the bed, hands on her hips in exasperation.

"_Not that you'd notice. The starter gears are a little worn, that's all. I think shutdown heat is playing tricks with the alloy the Guild specifies…"_

He nodded.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was going to take some time off while we were in Rio and mill some better ones with Dad…oof!"

Jenny vanished and the helmet bounced off his midsection with reasonable force. He caught it, frowning at where she'd just been as she popped back into view.

"The hell was that for?"

Jerome frowned right back, and Jenny just shook her head at him.

"_You were in danger of being maudlin. Call it a preemptive strike. Look…there'll be time to cry about it later, for both of us. We'll go out and get sloppy drunk, deliberately, break some laws, deliberately, see if we can break our record for statutes violated per hour. I promise, sweetie. But right now, we both gotta hustle up to Shiva Station before they start the property-destroying party without us."_

She was right, that gentle voice sharing his emotions as she always had. First things first and time to go.


	2. The Wild Black Yonder

Chapter 2: The Wild Black Yonder

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism."

--Murphy's Laws of War

As the hatchway from the upper living area into the garage banged open, pulled up by one or the other of the pair in complete disregard for the slight sticking edge, a rectangle of light elongated down the steep stairs and did little enough to relieve the blackness inside. Jerome descended the stairs carefully, helmet under his arm and paused at the bottom, slapping the wall for a switch that proved elusive, then sighed.

"That's right, you wanted to save juice down here…can I get something? Ambient light, garage door opened, running lights?"

The residual flicker of blue from the upstairs went out and a rumbling hum came from the segmented garage door as it began to roll back along the ceiling. Jenny appeared again, her image leaning on something hulking and barely visible in the growing dim light from the outside world and a look of intermingled pride and regret on her face, not for the first time. It was long, filling most of the space with its deeply gleaming grey bulk, chunky and faceted. Stubby forward-swept wings bristled with projecting muzzles and two upward fins doubled as control surfaces and missile pylons, warning labels in garish shades of red slowly emerging from the dark murk. The darkly-tinted cockpit glass gleamed opalescent, the entire craft little more than an armored pilot enclosure around two enormous complex engines and the fusion plant that fed them. It wasn't what you'd call aerodynamic, or even pretty, but elegantly functional and unmistakably something that was designed to go out, perpetrate acts of incredible violence, and return with the pilot intact—the sort of ship, in other words, that disdained flash and popularity in favor of ensuring a severe disparity in firepower and enough power to make up for lack of aerodynamic forethought. As the door clunked to a halt the cockpit hissed open, much more smoothly than the door had moved, and Jenny vanished for a moment. Something went click, and running lights sprang to life along the deeply shining grey hull, illuminating the weapon muzzles, red and green at the wingtip ends, and finally white on the registration, II-JNC-02 emblazoned on both sides of the forward fuselage.

A faint warm breeze ruffled Jerome's hair as the fan blades filling the back of the nacelles lazily spun at idle. He began his customary walkaround of the craft. The ducting and control surfaces behind the nacelles proper swiveled in all combinations as Jenny, unseen, manipulated the stick. The pylons pivoted slightly inward and outward as they should, and everything on the wings looked acceptable as well. With all control surfaces verified, he shrugged and chucked the helmet up into the cockpit.

"_Everything look good? Everything _feels_ fine."_

Jenny said, projecting herself a mere six inches tall and standing on the edge of the canopy's frame. Jerome nodded, putting a hand on the rungs built into the armor.

"Of course. As always."

And with a quick scramble he pulled himself up and in, reaching behind for the helmet that had landed on part of the back of the ejection seat. The soft foam gave as he sank down into the command chair, then firmed again with increasing pressure. Despite the interior being a particularly featureless shade of nondistracting grey, the foam was painted with whimsical leopard spots, slightly faded by now. The seat was shaped exactly like his backside by now, even without the form-fitting aspects of the inflation. A shimmy to the left and right, and he nodded.

"Mold me. Wait…OK."

Jenny chuckled, changing her projection to just her face. An eyebrow arched in amusement.

"_I'm not responsible if you don't get your own little gun turret aligned right. Get everything adjusted now or suffer…"_

And with a muted hiss the seat bolsters began to inflate with fluid across his front from both sides and below, leaving only the soles of his boots and his fingertips around the twin control sticks visible. The helmet's visor protruded through the protective cushion, ghostly backward images of status displays briefly flickering.

"Comm check—I've got positive oxygen pressure in here and cervical and forehead supports engaged. Smells like…cookies?"

Jenny's face smiled warmly at the strip of black glass, her projection moving to just above the rim of the display screens. The cockpit hummed, sliding down into place with a solid clunk of bolts shooting home and twisting.

"_Chocolate chip, with just a hint of vanilla and lemon…hope you like it, I tossed the last few crumbs from the last batch into the air tanks before I pressurized them up again. Ought to last for a while. Next time you want some phenolic phthalate outgassings?" _

There was a pause, a rather long one, the woman's smile getting more pleased by the moment as Jerome struggled to think what the hell she was talking about now. Unnoticed, the displays came to life, registering powerplant status, control inputs, weapons systems options, and flight telemetry.

"Yeah, OK, I'll bite."

Came the reply, filtered and processed from his subdermal microphone and relayed over the cockpit speakers for a more natural touch.

"_Since you asked…" _

Said Jenny, with just the trace of a smirk on her face, her words arriving faintly to Jerome's ears via bone conduction from the same transducer assembly and also simultaneously via the helmet speakers.

"_I think it's more commonly known as 'new car smell'. Toxic, cancerous, generally bad for you, but…"_

The laughter was mutual. Jerome's fingers twitched on the rightmost stick, although it didn't move. The pressure alone was enough to activate the sensors, and the hangar bay around the ship trembled as the big fans began to push a nontrivial amount of air. Landing skids screeched slightly as the thrust pushed them scrapingly along the concrete floor, adding trace amounts of metal to similar marks that had been made so many times before.

"_I already got a clearance, Jerome, the transponder's on, blah blah, plant's fine, let's just GO!"_

She sounded excited, but then again, it always was fun. Another fingertip twitch and the fans spun up to a modest 10% of rated power, the complex ducting behind the nacelles suddenly shifting configuration. High-speed air howled viciously through the thruster nozzles that studded the little ship's belly, and with a whirl of loose papers and a calendar of a young woman doing improbable things to a socket wrench being ripped right off the wall, the ship quivered and balanced delicately a few feet off the concrete floor. Jerome's heartrate was up, his breathing shallow, as he focused on keeping level, even though he knew Jenny would compensate for any twitches he didn't intend. They were a good enough team to understand each other that well—but unseen, behind the visor, he had a feral grin distorting his face. Just another couple dynes of pressure forward…

Hot air blasted backward against the walls of their hangar, sucked in by the thrust of the fans and heated by passage over the fusion plant's heat exchangers hidden within those intricately shaped ceramic walls. The ducting changed shape yet again, squeezing the fan-chopped wind down further for thrust and angling ever so slightly down. The ship leapt forward and up in a wildly steep curve, a steady hand increasing pressure and power the while, engines howling defiance of the mundanity of gravity. Their mercenary ID had cleared them a place in traffic in all upward lanes—a nicety that traffic control was notoriously loathe to grant—and so it was that the chunky fighter carved past morning commuters who only had an instant to goggle and swear at the grey bullet. The buildings everywhere snapped past like a vanishing memory, and the entire city shrank underneath them, expanding the view out of the virtual mirror in his helmet to include more and more of the world in the morning dimness. Airspace was easy to come by this morning, and so it was that Jerome actually consciously felt the faint shake of the throttle stick, indicating the first virtual stop had just been hit. A comfortable six hundred miles to the hour as clicked off on the physical displays and the ones shining on the inside of his visor, layered over the virtual view of the terrain all around as if there was no ship in the way…it was as close as you could get to a magic carpet, albeit a noisy and well-armed one. Clouds obscured human civilization as they shot through the world's veil and pierced ten thousand feet more or less straight up. Sure, those wickedly complicated fans and their beefy electric motors were scant feet from his back, but if you started thinking about vulnerabilities like that you'd never make it out of bed. All that mattered was that he could feel the vibration through the entire airframe. Reluctantly, Jerome leveled off with a twitch at the other control stick and reflexively checked the status displays. They'd been down for a couple weeks and—although Jenny could nevertheless feel anything wrong—only an idiot pushed the envelope without a recent check flight, unless there was an otherwise compelling reason.

Jenny sighed in quiet disappointment as they leveled off, her little wireframe icon in his vision expanding to raise a questioning eyebrow. He just shrugged, then pushed hard against the control stick, grinning to himself. The force was beyond a certain threshold they'd set up, and as the ducting irised partially shut again thrusters redirected some portion of the thrust to the starboard underside as the recessed control surfaces bit into the air. Fingers twitched at rhythmic intervals, the little ship stutter-rolling hard enough that the G-meter display in his visor sprang to life across the bottom and began to creep past five. The bolsters inflated automatically, pressing his body at every point and pulsing in time with his measured heart rate to aid blood in returning to his torso. Jenny muttered something about massages for idiots as the twitching stopped and he maintained steady force. Spinning like a chair leg on a lathe, the ship corkscrewed through the sky, abruptly stopped inverted and began spinning in the other direction. Satisfied, he brought it through one last revolution and began to press down on the starboard pedal, the nose yawing to that side. It was about then that Jenny put her foot down, figuratively speaking, and enlarged her projection to fill most of the HUD, solidifying from wireframe.

"_Hey!"_

Legs akimbo. Arms on hips. Frowning.

"_Old man!"_

The image changed to show her as ancient crone, white-haired and stooped. Bright blue eyes still shone through her wrinkled face.

"_Why, I remember when we used to play..."_

Jerome sighed audibly and shook his head the most he could manage in the firm foam supports.

"Say what you want, I'm not giving a good sticking to anybody who looks like that."

She did have a point, though. To hell with the measured one-axis regimen. It took no time at all for him to shove the throttle up with the palm of his hand, good and hard. Vibration came and went from the stop indicator, and reactor power slid up to a third. Ductwork opened fully, retracting out of the airstream except for the thruster bypass passages, and the turbine blades feathered back against the hub motor, extending like a shuttlecock's feathers out into the airstream. Jerome felt the punch of thrust in his chest as the intakes transitioned to ramjet. One eye was on the temperature indicators of the heat exchangers and the exhaust, but as they passed through the sound barrier everything stayed in the green. Hard over, and standing on its stubby little wings the ship shot around in a curve, changing heading at mach 2 and still accelerating. You had to be careful with maneuvers at this speed, the slightest pressure on the stick would cause dramatic G-forces, and although the airframe would probably handle plenty, the squishy bits inside the uniform were another matter entirely. So it was as much in challenge to her as in delight for himself that he pressed hard on the pedals, keeping the ship standing on edge and merely yawing the nose up as hard as she'd let him into a screaming vertical climb. The G-meter flashed orange, then red, and the numbers faded away as did all his peripheral vision. He shouted then, as much in sheer defiance of limits as to further pressurize his lungs against their own inertia. A primal scream, venting rage, anger, pride, joy, the fierce howl of exultation that was too big from time aloft to keep inside. And he wasn't alone, Jenny's exultant scream of defiance of her own circumstances and exhilaration joined him, the combination making an oddly major chord as they shot straight skyward, balanced on the pinnacle of technology.

It wasn't until the sky outside was black and the blue below started to look rounded that he pushed the stick forward again, transitioning to level flight. Mach 6 point something, and time to get serious. The air was thin and the view beautiful, and many times they'd hung at the very edge of the atmosphere, letting their airspeed drop to nil and merely floating, slowly falling down, balanced at the edge of space. Timeless moments where you felt clean, felt pure, an ambassador of your race—no matter how easy it was for humans to leave the planet of their birth now, it was a special thing somehow. Finally taking those first steps on your own, away from the arms of your parents—or so Jerome had always thought, joined in quiet contemplation by his strange companion.

After a suitable minute or so of cruising at the very edge of space, Jenny silently threw the image of PTMC's Shiva Station up on Jerome's HUD, with arrows indicating its position and velocity vector. It was a lousy reminder, but he murmured an assent under his breath. A slight shake ran in a circular spiral around the control and throttle sticks, almost a caress to the fingertips wrapped around them, and the ship tipped its nose up again, reactor power falling back to almost zero. As the nose passed through the vertical and the airspeed bled away Jerome breathed out softly and was content to watch. She had a level of subtlety he'd never mastered--of course, being part of the ship's computer gave her a certain cheating advantage along those lines, but nevertheless she'd had an uncanny ability for inhuman precision even when she'd been alive, so many years ago. The world was hanging above him in the view now, a fragile vision-dominating marble, slowly edging downward until he was staring straight down at the vaguely discernable outline of the continent. Shiva's icon had changed to a mere ghost of transparency now, a slow roll bringing the position indicator facing straight ahead and the vector merely upward. Jenny pitched forward into a slow dive, engines still at a mere idle, until the speed indicator changed scales and snapped back to the left end of its range at a paltry mach 1.

_"Ladies and gentlemen..."_

Came the perky voice into Jerome's ears and bones, the little corner-Jenny suddenly in a skimpy stewardess uniform. The icon of the reactor enlarged, blinking orange with a "110" emblazoned across it, and the thruster display greyed itself out.

_"...the first officer has illuminated the spaceflight sign..."_

With a shudder and a roar audible through the material of the hull the supersonic air pouring through the exotically-shaped inlets turned to titanic elephants worth of thrust, heated to phenomenal temperatures by the heat exchangers sitting where a normal ship would have a spot for fuel to be injected.

_"...please ensure all cabin windows are closed and extinguish all smoking structural components..." _

Jerome did his best to ignore the G-meter, although he knew Jenny was better at this sort of thing and would keep it gentle. Hard maneuvers at this speed were fatal to spaceframes, people, pretty much everything. Only the stupid got in ego wars at this insane velocity.

_"...and return all passengers to their upright positions...."_

Up came the nose as the speed indicator passed through mach fifteen on the way toward orbital speed. Gentle was one thing, but her idea of gentle was a sustained 6 Gs of acceleration toward a ballistic trajectory. She wasn't kidding about needing to be in a hurry. He panted, keeping his lungs expanded, clinging to her voice as the running thread through the blackness that would otherwise descend around him.

_"...and secure any organs that may have shifted..." _

...and that was that. The reactor icon shrank again, shading back to green with a comfortable 10 in smaller text across it. Across the bottom of his view, the speed indicator anticlimactically changed scale again, the indicator quivering right at the left side on a simple label of "EV". They streaked upward on a precisely calculated trajectory, seven miles a second. Jerome watched the Earth fall away, breathing heavily as the bolsters relaxed their death grip. Shiva Station was still respectably far away, but the wireframe indicator winked out anyway. Jenny's projection was back in her usual flight suit, now, and sat down on the shield indicator, yawning theatrically.

_"Consider that a proper flight evaluation? Honestly, what's with this 'careful and easy' stuff? You know I'd pick up on anything wrong." _

There was a bit of needling there, there almost always was, but mostly it was concern. Jerome shrugged, straightening his fingers and flexing them in turn to restore a bit of blood flow, and thought about it for a moment before replying. Distance and time to Shiva slowly ticked down, unnoticed by either of them.

"I suppose..."

He said, sounding genuinely surprised.

"What with all that's happened. A combination of 'slow down, make sure' and maybe a bit of Dad. You know he made me do a walkaround of everything that'd go faster than walking speed and a full evaluation. I _know_ it was the whole PTMC bastardry when he had to breathe stale air to be able to afford needed maintenance...when you're not thinking, you fall back on your habits. And knowing that, a habit of taking the time for caution when there's time to take is maybe not such a bad one?"

Jenny nodded at that, stretching out her legs and crossing them. _"I suppose so. I don't think it's bad, I don't think it means you don't trust me, but I do think that this is a time when you need to act like your usual self even though you may not feel it. A bit of hangover, a lot of upset, sure, but if you go in there with a bit of the sniffles you're going to be laughed out. If you act like the usual swaggering ass-kicking merc with a good bit of renown, you may start to fall back into _that_ set of habits, and then you'll be taken seriously. We are an awfully small outfit to be biting for this kind of gig and about the only way you'll really impress the HR drones is being overwhelmingly competent with an impeccable record to the point that you even make civvies realize we've got what it takes...whatever that may be, whatever the job actually IS."_

Jerome nodded, as much as he could within the confines of the seat and the helmet.

"Right, right. So go in there bow-legged, smoking a cigar, dirty up my flight suit by rolling around on the hangar floor, spit and swear..."

Jenny let out an outraged snort, changing her appearance to suit.

_"You out of your spacin' mind, partner? I said class act, not rock-eatin' goddamn asteroid cowboy! Besides, the suits probably wouldn't understand half of the various obscenities we know."_

That giggle was a little alarming from her, as she strutted across the speed indicator, alternating between smoky come-hither looks and threatening scowls. When she got to the other side, both of their laughter echoing over the speakers, she flashed herself back to normal and sat back down on the reactor icon, facing Jerome and leaning forward.

_"Just don't let them rattle you, OK? They'll be looking to do something to shake you, I guarantee it. Prove for themselves how you handle pressure. Probably not anything actually dangerous. Although I'd love to see you wind up putting a hole through a suit's eye for jumping at you, I think they're smarter than that."_

Jerome grinned at the comment.

"Yeah, well, think that'd get me the job or not? You're a high-maintenance bitch and all, and I'm having sudden cash flow problems..."

It was as good a cue as any for Jenny to change her image to one clad in long luxurious fur, her hair for once up in a bun and under a diamond-studded tiara.

_"Now, really, darling, I simply must be able to escape your ghastly beastial desires with a good shopping spree at the Underpaid Quartermasters Combat-Lossed Military Goods Emporium every now and again." _

She spoke with an affected stereotypical upper-class British accent, poorly, and shook her head sadly at a smirking Jerome.

_"Really, you can be such a pig, whatever would my aunt, the Contessa, think of such behavior?"_

Jerome shrugged.

"That she was jealous she wasn't getting a sound rogering as well?"

Jenny fell over, laughing much too hard to make her projection stand up or change its appearance. It was honestly closer to the cackle of a evil genius, pitched in crow registers, than any sort of pretty lady-like tinkling giggle. It was earthy, honest, completely wicked, and Jerome wouldn't have changed it for the world. The reactor power twitched back and forth a couple percent and the entire visor display fuzzed for a moment before she got herself under control. Jerome stared at her curiously as she stood up and flicked back to her normal appearance, still snickering from time to time, until she had to ask.

_"...What? Oh. Just...the image...you and my aunt. You know I still can't tell you the truth about my family, and I'm not gonna tell the stock boilerplate lie, but take my word for it, it's just a little incongruous..."_

Jerome just sat there giving her the metaphorical hairy eyeball as PTMC's big station began to loom large in the viewpoint. It turned into a waiting game—as clearance to dock flashed up on the screen and the docking bay irised open. As the speed fell off in a precisely precalculated fashion. As the tractor field grasped the little ship, bringing it down on extended skids with an indelicate thump in the middle of a crowded bay. As the technicians and ship crews scrambled back into the area that had been cleared for their landing. Finally, Jenny sighed as she opened the cockpit and deflated the seat cushions.

"_It's complicated, OK? Even to you. There's stuff you don't need to hear about. I wish I could relent on this, but it's almost impossible that you'd ever need to deal with it. It doesn't matter any more."_

All indicators showed safe, but it was a long moment before Jerome finally looked away from her apologetic gaze to check the status of ship systems, a silent begrudging assent. The reactor was grey, a simple 5 across it, the thrusters were grey, airspeed was zero and altitude was more or less correct. With a sigh, he stood up in the cockpit, unfastening his helmet as the display went dead and peering around him with his own eyes.

They'd been vectored down to land between what looked like a grimy supply transport bearing the PTMC logo and a large wedge-shaped destroyer with a private registry number, painted a painful-to-look-at checkerboard of hot pink and dull orange. The engine pods of the destroyer stuck out far enough—two giant faired cylinders to either side of the hull—that on their way down the tractor field operator must have had to slide them past the curve of the transport and underneath the exhaust nozzles. Despite the somewhat indelicate landing, it had been something of a precision piece of work to not smear them all over one ship or the other. Jerome glanced up toward the booth by the gigantic doors past the air retention forcefield, those doors now ponderously rumbling shut again with a basso profundo movement that was better felt than heard, and it was with not too much sarcasm that he bowed to the unseen operator up there. Helmet unceremoniously bounced off his seat and, under the watchful gaze of the lookouts manning the ventral turrets of the destroyer, Jerome slung himself over the edge of the hull and down to the ground.

Not for the first time was he thankful for his gloves—the hull still retained enough heat from their rapid flight through the atmosphere that it began to even permeate the ceramic plates that lined the gloves before he let go of the support braces. Softly pinging as it cooled at differential rates and with a faint whisper from the fans, running in reverse to cool the engines and dissipate waste heat from normal operation, the ship looked as at home here as it did anywhere. It was always a bittersweet thing to leave that warm embrace. Jenny's projection was gone as soon as he'd taken off his helmet, her little holo-image vanished as soon as he'd put on the helmet and never present unless they were unobserved, and strange as it would seem he missed her already even though she was more or less sitting right there on the bay floor.

The cockpit hissed slowly shut again, latching shut to prevent unauthorized access in his absence, but it was only her touch of whimsy that made her flick all her running lights on and off twice in the manner of a groundcar alarm system arming. A crew of burly men in utility jumpsuits trudged past Jerome, prodding with the laziness born of expertise at the controls of an industrial lifter. Crates and boxes piled high loaded it unevenly and it tilted badly, whining under the abuse as it vanished into the open hold of the PTMC transport.

"_Fifteen hours, tops, before an overhaul…"_

Came Jenny's soft whisper, arriving directly in his ears without passing through the air.

"_Typical PTMC neglect for you. Oh, that destroyer's registered to a hopped up little dictator out of Deimos. Captained by a Garcia something or other, bastard son of said dictator. Bet he's part of the competition. You should've taken my bet this morning, I could use a good waxing."_

Jerome scoffed subvocally, shaking his head a bit as he waited for a security guard's electric cart to whir past in the other direction before he set out for the recessed hatchway that held the elevators to the administrative levels.

"We haven't _seen_ him yet. I refuse to go by hearsay. Anyway, steer me, make yourself useful for once!"

Jenny muttered something about getting his eyeballs lasered for vision implants one of these days, which Jerome ignored, dodging a cargo crane slinging a net of gigantic containers across the top reaches of the bay as he ducked into the shelter of the giant structural members that the elevator ran between. Slapping the call button, he watched the crane traverse the entire length of the bay, eying the movement of the net curiously.

"I thought I felt a little light…"

He murmured. Jenny grunted in assent.

"'_Bout three-quarters. Cheaper to maintain a slow spin. Before you ask, yes, I got advance clearance and plotted the trajectory in to bring us to the bay at the right time with the right speed. OK, mister lost, first thing you wanna do is get onto the elevator platform, press the door close button…"_

A quiet laugh through his bones.

"_Deck 85, main pylon, by the way."_

Jerome sighed to himself, used to it but nevertheless amused, and did as she unnecessarily suggested. It was going to be a long ride, and once the doors closed on the sole occupant he sat cross-legged on the floor, gazing through the transparent structure with idle professional interest as the lift shot back upward. Two more bays on that pylon were revealed, one bustling with security short-range shuttles , the next seemingly storage for spare parts and mining ships, various sizes stacked and tucked away for a couple thousand feet from the shaft in all directions. He had to admit it was impressive, and Jenny let out a low whistle as well.

"_Now THAT'S the kind of manufacturing prowess that finally out-built the German asteroid bases! One of these days I've got to see about wrangling us a low-security tour of one of the close-in military assembly plants, see what they're cranking out these days. Make arrangements for a souvenir or two, you know how it goes."_

The elevator shot around in a low curve at the top of the bay, heading through the tube backwards toward the main pylon and speeding up. Through the front glassed-in wall Jerome watched the tunnel recede away, the scaffolding thinning for the connection until he could see twinkling black above and blue Earth below. It still looked good from up here, although there was a hell of a storm visible somewhere off below, big enough to be seen this far away. He realized it was probably weather effects from yesterday's catastrophe and frowned, reasonable mood taking a nosedive.

"I try not to know what hardware you manage to swipe--excuse me, legitimately obtain--on the secondhand salvage markets. I'm sure by the time you've gotten done wheeling, dealing, and filing serial numbers off it's all perfectly legal, I just don't want to be an accessory to whatever probably goes on before then."

A sigh drifted through his bones and into his brain as their huge docking pylon kept receding.

_"It's not like we don't have most of the clearances anyway. It's stuff that's not export-licensed, that's all. And our little company--that legally owns the hull, our place, and employs you--IS based off good old Terra Cognito. There's no SPACE for civvie or merc-detuned versions of the dangerous hardware, not if you still want to be ground-to-interplanetary capable without a dropship."_

It was an old familiar argument, both sides having been argued by both parties at various times in the past. Jerome chuckled grimly despite himself.

"Tell you what, we're not rehashing this one again. At least not now. I like us being self-reliant, I hate downgrading anything--be it those ridiculous engines or the modular gunnery setup. We'll probably at least get some juicy salvage out of this, but if it's a eight-figure gig we can actually seriously discuss getting some kind of drone barge to save fuel, stretch our legs, on the interplanetary hopes. And _make_ them more often for those good gigs."

_"Now who's not rehashing it?" _

Said Jenny, laughing.

_"I still say at that point you may as well just pick up a surplus destroyer to refit, and I don't know if I can transfer, uh, me!...to any other computer system. Although a dumb orbit barge might not be a bad idea, at that...a reinforced spine, hang a commercial-grade reactor on it and a big impulse engine, we could get by with a couple cargo containers worth of space for a makeshift hangar/living quarters and maybe some hardpoints to do little transport runs if there were squadrons or cargo involved with a gig--you know, let me work the numbers on that and get back to you. It's promising but not che..whoops, get up get up, we're almost there!"_

Jerome stood obediently, running his fingers through his hair and whiskers in a last attempt to look a bit more presentable, and stood at a military at-ease posture facing the door. A deep breath when it opened, and he was ready to face the world with confidence, a full belly, a fast ship, and an empty wallet.


	3. Pardon Me But Your Ship Is Showing

Chapter 3: Pardon Me But Your Ship is Showing

"Don't mind you playing demon (as long as it's with me)

If this is Hell you could say it's heavenly.

Hell ain't a bad place to be."

– AC/DC

_I was...different. I was alive once, although subjectively it's difficult to tell the difference. Electricity still courses through my mind and limbs, I still think and feel. Structures--different. From flesh and bone to ceramic and titanium, from a warm beating heart to a plasma-hot reactor. From ludicrously complex and difficult to repair with a limited lifespan to ludicrously complex and expensive to repair with fewer limits. I had a name once, a story of my own I couldn't wait to tell, a mission that was supposed to be a great honor in which I was already written off as dead before I had even left. And now I have merely a hull number. I pose as a clever AI to the world, talking to many and truly holding conversations with very few. I coldly use all my skills at deception and intrigue for the benefit of myself and the man I had chosen as a companion before the incident. My mission ended with my death, or so I choose to interpret the language used by those who gave me my mission and my mandate and my assumed name so long ago. And now what is left but memory and feeling and a second chance at a sort of life? I can sense the unimaginable, think faster than anybody alive, fly as if this steel prison were my own body, register contact as skin being touched, and knock most anything mobile out of the air or off the ground. But I cannot truly touch in return, save the brush of a carefully tuned field bubble. I love and am loved in return, and that alone is enough reason to ensure that the future will be better managed than the past. I have been stripped down to a core of vitality and memories, I have ensured I would be reborn in this machine in my final moments of organic life, via means I can never disclose, I am the nuclear phoenix. And while I can be stopped, I will never be beaten. II-JNY-02 is the tail number. I? I am still and always Jenny._

_I watch him always. There are advantages to having the sensors of an assault craft. Strike that. 'Mining ship'. Like some sort of stalker Santa, not only do I know when he's asleep and awake (as if the snoring wouldn't tip you off) but I hear what he hears thanks to the microphone. When he's away from the hull, I've taken the liberty of mounting button cameras to his 'official' clothing so I can see what he sees--and in some cases, what he doesn't. I still feel his emotional states, although I want to attribute this to overpowered sensors and long familiarity rather than any sort of eldritch sensitivity as I had when I was alive, I and all my kind. I don't think he realizes how much I see and do, and that's fine with me. It's hard to stay behind the scenes and pull a few strings here and there when somebody keeps sticking their nose back into the curtain ropes. One thing he said to me has always stuck in my mind--or what passes for it these days--"Don't tell me where you've been. Show me what you know." He doesn't ask about my methods and I don't volunteer. He's almost childishly honest, in large part thanks to a good upbringing that taught him that virtue, hard work, and a heavy dose of firepower would prevail. It's sort of the Corbell family motto, from what I've been able to uncover. Never mind that the world doesn't work like that. But, with a little people-politics firepower and a good front man, it can be MADE to do so locally. That's sort of my specialty. Always has been. My old mission and all--his ways of settling arguments are effective and final. The laser, the missile, the fist. I prefer to be the knife in the back or the candy offered before the meeting. We make a good team. _

_I had a lazy eye out for what was happening in the hangar the entire elevator ride up. It always makes me a little uneasy to be crammed between two huge ships like that. I may be well armored but that kind of mass collision, even at low speeds, would torque the entire spaceframe badly enough to require a complete teardown. It didn't come as too much of a surprise to hear the fringes of a coded transmission coming from level 85 to the garish destroyer. Wasn't much of a code, so I listened in. Always do. Pay attention to your surroundings, always, forever. You slip and you die. It was the habit I never even bothered trying to break. Apparently the captain was pissed, judging from the background of oaths in the transmission. One of the captain's bodyguards was warning the ship to prep for immediate departure. Hmm. So there were bodyguards up there, at least three people total. Activity in the destroyer picked up dramatically as it sounded its siren, returning crew members scrambling over and past the workers trying to unload the supply transport. There were a few curses and the abortive start of a fistfight until somebody with a bosun's pips roundhoused the crewmember who'd swung, saluted to the worker, and dragged the poor wight back up the boarding ladder. More worrisome, though, was the thing bringing its engines and weapons online. That was the LAST thing I needed, sitting right under the paranoid eye of the belly gunners whose fingers were twitching on cannons that would blow me right through the bay floor in small pieces at this range. PTMC hangar control didn't miss it either, and there was a rather sternly worded squawk over all frequencies that turrets must be locked down at all times inside the station. Unfortunately, one of those turrets was locked directly pointing at my cockpit. The gunner turned on his fire control radar, I could feel it on my 'skin' like an unpleasant sunburn. Reflexively, I tensed up--reactor spiking power through the fan motors enough so that I stayed barely poised on my landing skids. The blast out the rear had barely even begun to move air by the time I had flicked a missile on the tailfin to anti-radiation. My own radar lashed the turret hard enough to blister the paint and I broadcast a warning to hangar control, the hangar PA system, and the destroyer that further targetting of this ship would trigger automatic defense systems. It seemed to do the trick, there was a frenzied exchange of shouting inside the big ugly thing and between the bridge and hangar control before the belly turret radar shut down. In the same cold AI tone, I thanked them all for prompt compliance and ensuring safety and amity, to which I had to snicker to myself. Nevertheless...a quick extra excursion of power and I'd hopped several feet forward, out of the path of the possible projectile. You didn't need fire control to hit a stationary object at that range, and the guy looked like he was about to have a heart attack. If that turret moved to sight me back in, though, I'd spike it right off the destroyer and to hell with the consequences. Behind me, the workers swore as they began to restack crates of documents which my fan blast had blown off the jack and scattered all over the hangar floor. I got a wide berth after all that, technicians taking the long path around the hauler to avoid getting in my way. Did I mention I liked my space? It wasn't the kind of thing the boy needed to know about. No ordinance expended, no damage done, just a little posturing, a little hasty de-escalation. A little "I may be the smallest thing here but don't fuck around"-ness, to coin a phrase. _

_I went back to watching Jerome as the elevator slowed, warning him as I made a note to run the numbers on the idea we were coming up with. As long as it kept things to just him and me, I'd be happy. The idea of transferring to something that required a real crew to run was about as pleasant to me as the idea of being anonymously gang raped every waking moment, and had a number of similarities. To his credit, he shook it all off by the time he stood, looking proud and confident. The doors hissed open....and he immediately hit the back wall and went down under the weight of the three people that had just collided with him at a fast trot. The split-second glimpse the button had of the face of the man in the lead was enough for me, it was Captain Garcia of that damn destroyer, and the carrier signal from the man to his right was the bodyguard who'd sent the warnings. _

_"OK!"_

_I shouted to Jerome across our link. _

_"Destroyer!"_

_He was fast, he always had been, and I nearly wasn't in time. The hand he'd thrown up to protect himself--now pressed back against the button camera--already had its meticulously sharpened claws out to rake his assailant's eyes and the sensors I'd planted in his gun had already registered one fingerprint matching the registered operator. But he also listened well and the swipe turned into a hand on the white-clad man's shoulder to push him up and back. _

_"Garcia, captain."_

_I added, doing my best to give him the information he might need to assuage the situation. Swearing at a breakneck pace in Catalan, Captain Garcia came to his feet like a rocket and straightened his tunic with an angry vicious tug. He opened his mouth to harangue Jerome, deliberately delaying his own ascent to vertical, and noticed the way the elevator lights shone off the Io Institute badge. Jerome had spent about a week polishing it to a mirror finish, and I'd taken the liberty of coating it with a little industrial diamond dust for a sparkle. It occasionally did pay to advertise, if you were a little bit discreet about it. Whatever was going through his mind must've changed about then. A normal mercenary was pretty safe to berate when you owned your own destroyer. They were cheap and easy to come by, the mercs that is, they sure wouldn't shoot you if they were in the PTMC station and about the worst they could do is bring suit. Dueling, while certainly not forbidden, wasn't a likely recourse of anybody competent enough to have a reason to be here on the admin side of things. The badge, though, that marked the wearer as somebody who had gone through more rigorous training and conditioning than any of the in-system militaries offered. And so it was that the good captain extended his arm to Jerome. _

_After all...I could read the guy's thought process from a mile away. He'd taken an Io-er by surprise, and recovered quicker. He could afford to be a little gracious. If Garcia were more observant, of course, he'd notice that Jerome had paused in a position where his outstretched arm could rip off Garcia's family legacy, and the hand that was behind him for balance was in fact resting with the palm on the butt of that nasty little sidearm. Crouched like that, he'd make a hard target for the bodyguards. And so it was with perfect equanimity that Jerome accepted the arm and stood up. The two men eyed each other for a moment, both confident they were superior, until Garcia finally gave in and apologized. It was graceful, fulsome, effulgent, and as was considered proper, and in the same spirit Jerome apologized for having hindered his journey, wishing him well and all the various counterflourishes that seemed to be required. The two of them traded places and Jerome slipped out between the bodyguards, who packed into the elevator behind Garcia. He bowed to Jerome, Jerome bowed back, and burst out laughing as the door closed. _

"You were right, Jenny! I would've owed you a waxing! Did you catch some of those insults at first? I want to listen to the playback later. WHAT a command of invective!"

_"Well, if you feel that bad about it, any time you like...Of course I was right. I'm almost always right."_

_I couldn't help but be a little smug about it, after all. _

_"You'll want door seven, dear, on the right. S. Dravis. Bio says he's the head of HR. Complete bastard. He's already pulled our file, and Dad's, so don't take any crap from him"_

_Pulled not long after I accepted the cattle call, actually. Plenty of time to read, sit, and stew over it. The trace request I'd left in the Io computers had let me know that somebody at this station had actually requested his record and copies of the transfer paperwork from them to him, legitimizing the boy's ownership of the hull. My hull. And the subsequent transfer to our shell company. It was kind of a long story, and I had a sinking feeling that this suit would bring it up. Nevertheless from his vital signs Jerome seemed reasonably relaxed as he made his way down the plushly-carpeted corridor, even his booted footfalls completely muffled, and knocked smartly at the door I'd specified. Sounded like ebony. Looked like ebony. A little sardonic analysis of the sound of the knock, though, and I figured out it was a shell of ebony around a core of standard thermoplastic of the same density. So PTMC were cheaping out on even their higher-ups...interesting. Possibly valuably so._

_The door slid silently open, revealing a rather austere room beyond. A mammoth desk dominated the office, its sole occupant sitting behind a seemingly uncrossable expanse of sleek blackness, the back of his chair against a giant picture window. Through it the top tips of two pylons were visible, and Earth seen downwards, visually dissected through PTMC's massive girders and construction. How appropriate. Recessed lighting in the ceiling shone down on a carpet the color of dried blood and subtly illuminated the path towards a small chair in front of the desk. The chair's occupant was bald and greying, with a face that looked like somebody showed him gruesome roadkill as a child and the resultant expression of disgust had frozen on it. I hated him on sight, for no reason I could really define. Call it the instinct of a loyal dog, but something about this room screamed out to me about the true kind of evil—not the showy flashy sort that tortures children and megalomaniacally starts wars, but the quiet faceless grey creeping uniformity that would start a war to make the bottom line look better, the kind that ground people down into a faceless paste, ever flowing and completely exchangeable. I wanted to do something, anything. Scream, shout, exit the hangar bay and unobtrusively put a single Vulcan round through that glass into the back of the suit's shiny skull...The air leak would be slow enough that my love could escape. Eight figure plans turned to ashes in my mind but there was nothing I could do to change anything. I may have hissed loud enough for him to hear, because his heart rate shot up and he entered the room carefully, on the balls of his feet and glancing around for hidden dangers. Oh, you poor innocent bastard, you have no idea what awaits you in here, and for once the only ways I can help you are the direct ones. You're going to get eaten alive and there's nothing I can do about it._

_The snake spoke. _

"Ah, I believe you have the wrong office…mercenary contracting is all done through deck 10."

_Jerome didn't pause, just kept on into the room, grinning affably and pretending he hadn't heard it, like a big tomcat. My big tomcat. My big DUMB tomcat. _

"And you must be Sam D himself, the man of this contract's Bat-signal, metaphorically speaking of course."

_He said, tossing his sidearm on the desk easily. As the suit's eyes went to it glinting and spinning its way to a halt, Jerome had turned around the chair and easily straddled it, rocking it forward on two legs and keeping balanced there with his elbows on that giant desk. What the hell was he DOING? I told him not to play cowboy! _

"Samuel Dravis, yes…"

_Said the older man, with a moue of distaste at the familiar form of address. He didn't look like the sort of person anybody would ever call Sam and mean it, so naturally Jerome was using it to get under his skin. I taught that boy well. Maybe there was a kind of sense to this cowboy crap._

"And I oversee a number of contracts—that is my position as head of HR after all…"

_His laugh was humorless and inserted like punctuation. My god, was the man a vampire before he'd gotten employed by PTMC or had Post-Terran leeched the soul and hair away from him a little at a time? _

"…to which one might you be referring, Mr…?"

_Jerome laughed as well, politely but a lot more honestly. The bloody maniac was playing games he didn't understand again. _

"Jerome Corbell, at your service. Well, I don't have the precise number handy, but my secretary"

_That's one way of putting it._

"called in acceptance of the interview request this morning, and our records tell me that you've already pulled all the relevant files. I tell you what, I'd bet it's the same one that had Mr. Garcia storming out of here like his pants were on fire not five minutes ago, no?"

_Dravis…he sure as hell wasn't a Sam to me…looked down at the display built into his desk, lifting an eyebrow when he turned back to Jerome. _

"Yes, I did review your file when your little company applied for the interview, but. There appear to be a few discrepancies. Most notably, all your action manifest lists is a single converted mining ship. This is a large contract, Mr. Corbell, and nowhere in our précis was there mention of a dropship being provided for intersystem transport of the craft you bid for use…even though its suitability for the mission remains in question. There were certain irregularities in the files, you see."

_Looking satisfied, he shut off the display and rose to his feet. _

"I thank you for taking the time to come up and visit us today, but…"

_And now Jerome got up with a decent degree of speed. The chair slammed back into the carpet and hard, I could hear something crack as he used it for a launchpad. He was all smiles as he leaned forward, palms braced on the desk. He was at least a foot taller than this little office weasel, and the jumpsuit was honestly a size too small. Lean corded muscle visibly bunched under the black satin fabric, and his heritage meant that any time he smiled quite that broadly, the tips of very sharp canines were visible. Not that we'd used that to our advantage. _

"Really, Sam, it's an understandable mistake. You must be very busy indeed up here, with such a large problem on such short notice, but you see we don't require a dropship. I believe you will find, with a bit of due diligence in perusal of the records, that the ship submitted for bid is the same hull with the same impulse-capable engines that the Io Institute operated as an interplanetary assault trainer."

_Men…sometimes they were so predictable. Bluster, bluster, hiss, spit. I kept quiet. Didn't want to screw things up unless something strategically important came up. Never had the testosterone poisoning cloud my thoughts, so this wasn't really my fight._

"Nevertheless, with all your qualified candidates, I'm sure that one ex-mining assault ship and a company with a proven record of overwhelming firepower and matching discretion is probably far from what you actually need with that kind of on-target megatonnage equivalent the contract specified… so thanks for seeing me. If you don't mind…"

_Jerome reached forward and collected his pistol from the desk with an apologetic look. He was playing this to the hilt and it was great to see. The bastard was over a barrel and he knew it. If the job had been taken, that destroyer wouldn't even now be screaming out of here, impulse engines lit and doing a credible job of disappearing back toward Mars. As soon as Dravis touched his display control again I knew we'd won at least serious consideration but the look he directed at it didn't bear repeating. I had the uneasy feeling that we'd just acquired an enemy in the process. _

"Well, Mr. Corbell, as long as you're here…"

_Dravis said, his smiling face a mask for annoyance at having to make any concessions at all. _

"I'll take another look at the file, request additional copies of those records, maybe we can get this straightened out. Do…"

_It was gonna be 'wait in the lounge'. Play the waiting game while this puffed-up little adder, so to speak, stalled and played solitaire and in general did nothing, purely to see how long Jerome would wait and by extension how much he could be pushed around on terms and pricing. Jerome knew it. I knew it. Dravis knew it. I slugged off a quick message, from our consulting group's main network address straight to his private corporate email. Attached the relevant files, timestamped to make them look like they'd just been retrieved in the last few seconds. The checksum matched, if he'd bother to send a packet back to verify. Of course it matched. It was trivial. The Io systems and I were, if not exactly close friends, at least the electronic equivalent of drinking buddies. And all their master verification and access codes were still stored in my supposedly-secure memory…which didn't hurt either. The display went 'bong', but quietly so, and Dravis paused mid-word, glancing down. _

"…have a seat."

_He continued instead. Score one for the good guys. _

"Your secretary is very efficient. As she must be monitoring our conversation, allow me to extend my compliments. I appreciate excellent work in any arena."

_I wasn't sure I wanted a compliment from the sleaze, or to serve as a platter for his presented ego. He covered quick and recovered fast, which was expected at this level. Grudgingly, I had to extend a bit of respect. He was a consistent sleaze, hard to rattle. This would be a tough nut to crack with words alone, and just as in the old days, I was immediately evaluating various possibilities and ways to find weak points--but Jerome just smiled politely._

"She says it's always a pleasure to facilitate time-sensitive negotiations between peers."

_This time he was sitting down on the chair the proper way. I'd said no such thing, but it was a remarkably clever lie. Called out Dravis for being egotistical, set them up on an equal level, and pointed out that this was PTMC's problem and not his. Maybe he was learning how to be a political animal after all…heavens knew I'd been thinking of drastic action not so long ago myself. Live with somebody long enough, you start to overlap a little. Dravis excused himself and bent his head, reading the files a lot more carefully this time. I spared a moment to listen in on the hangar and let the boys wait for a bit._


	4. Death by Elocution

Chapter 4: Death By Elocution

"There are no manifestos like cannon and musketry."

The Duke of Wellington

_A ground-to-orbit shuttle had landed beside me, disgorging a full load of mid-level execs who had gone ballistic down to the surface for lunch. Seemed awfully wasteful, but it was hardly my dime on the line. I got a good number of stares, including a lady who dropped her expensive caffeinated concoction all over the floor and elbowed her companion out of a discussion with the shuttle pilot. They both stared, doing the full walk around, heedless of the last of the group straggling behind and exhorting them to catch up. Nice to meet a pair of connoisseurs even if I couldn't talk to them. I could hear them discussing the design, the age, and trying to figure out what in the world had been done to the engines. The man mentioned it looked like an Israeli design and the woman professed ignorance of their history in the time period in question. That was when the history lesson started, the man recounting the barest basics of the past hundred years. I could've told it better. A lot better. Any kid knew that World War Two had gone on far too long, if they'd paid the slightest amount of attention in history class. In fact, they ought to have called it the Great War if that title hadn't already been used by the direct prelude to that gigantic debacle. If Hitler hadn't been offed by his own people, who knows what might have happened to the war effort? From all accounts he was a little scatterbrained about how to focus his military effort and production. He might've kept changing programs and tactics instead of backing his push east into Russian with superior German technology, more or less forged out of cast iron and willpower. If the Soviets hadn't fallen and Germany hadn't used the country as a base to push south and back west, who knows how much sooner the Axis might have been defeated? Dammit. Dravis was poring over our combined history, Jerome was distractedly field-stripping his pistol--I'd told him a thousand times not to, not when you're with a client, but he was the kind of guy who couldn't keep his hands to himself for too long. I'd never really tried to discourage that, it had its perks--and the meanwhile I was immersing myself in history with these two folks. Oh well. Time to kill, enjoy it while it lasts._

_Japan was hardly a threat, not after the first exchange of atomics that resulted in a radioactive giant lizard stomping around downtown Tokyo. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, was crazy enough to use nuclear power for anything but propulsive experiments after that point, at least not on Earth. With Africa and the Middle East falling to German conquest, most of the European and Allied powers were spirited away to the US and Canada and Greenland while the German military's attention was largely elsewhere. Citizenry, military resources, troops, you name it. The conflict went south. The Allies unified South America with a fair bit of bribery and gunboat diplomacy and began building infrastructure and military resources. Propellers gave way to jet turbines which in turn gave way to rocketry on a large scale, first chemical and then nuclear. Manned interceptors and bombers cruised in the stratosphere, darting halfway across the world in a futile attempt to reclaim territory that could never be held. Soon the race made it up into orbit…and beyond. You had to admit that humanity moved pretty quickly when it had to. For all that Jerome thinks Buenos Aires was a catastrophic loss of life—and it certainly was—there was a previous precedent. You can still see the chunk taken out of the Atlantic Seaboard from where German space forces dropped a small asteroid on downtown Washington, DC. Then again, there were still parts of Berlin where you didn't want to be caught in the rain, the single intercontinental missile that had rained nerve gas indiscriminately over the city having a lasting legacy of illness even to this day. The war went cold afterwards. Call it the mass of monkeys pausing in horror at what would surely ensue if this kept up. It went so cold it went off Earth entirely, more or less. Respective powers fought it out at Lagrange points, well-mined Hohlman orbits, and as the combatants went so did the settlements. The Moon at first. Battles, bases. The victors sought refuge in underground domes that had a habit of spreading, and cruisers got built there too. Bigger ones, with the lower gravity. The losers went Sunward, to Mars and its moons. Captain Garcia might well have been a descendent of one of the first groups of military workers that had settled there and begun raising families and battlewagons with equal speed--it wasn't worth my time to look into it. Resource stations in the asteroids, small warring craft battling for access to the expensive mass drivers that threw the hard-earned ore ouput back to their respective civilizations, humanity exploded outward and flung their conflict ahead of them. Higher, faster, further. Even though the population had eventually risen up against a generation of conflict with the introduction of the global network and forced a formal peace, rumor had it that Nazi carriers and British battleships still floated out there, crewed by the families of the original crew, resupplying from deserted asteroids and not realizing the conflict had been over for a long time. _

_It wasn't too long before the two sides of the world joined into a single representative government before separatists started to emerge. Particularly the religious variety. The Jews were understandably demanding reparations from the Pan-Germanic Empire (and the fuss over the mere name of all the countries that had become part of the Axis powers was substantial by itself!) and the Palestinians wanted the state they'd been granted so long ago to be given to them alone, and they could both agree that while they hated each other with a fiery passion--ah, humanity, killing over imaginary friends on such a scale--getting out from oversight so they could go right back to arming for conflict was the biggest priority. And, not to be modest, but that's where I came in. You see, while they were still under the PGE governing body, they weren't allowed more than a certain amount of military forces for self-defense. It was more like a second treaty of Versailles, but a great deal more reasonable. And it applied to every nation--they'd contribute resources to a sort of global army, directed by the PGE council, based on their population. The PGE eventually merged with the United Nation-States of the Americas and you had a pretty effective United Earth Government, as both sides had built up the same sort of structures. Easy to combine, easy to ram through, after all who would argue against unity and peace? For all the liberty advocates there were more people just tired of war who wanted it over on any terms. I wouldn't call it a mistake, not really, but it left a lot of people curtailed and upset._

_In the middle of all this, once Israel had proved it had the knowhow to build a atmospheric carrier and enough fighters to fill it, they decided that wasn't enough. They wanted to be able to present a proper fait accompli to the United Earth Council for seizing the entire territory they'd been initially granted, and the same defense industry contractors that had built the fighters bought an industrial concern and spun off some of their top people to manage it. Citing the need for increasing resource extraction in a variety of different environments and planets, they laid out a plan for producing a overbuilt mining ship. I listened to the man animatedly explaining it all to the young lady. They were closer now, the man gesturing to bits of my armor with his hands in an effort to show relative thicknesses. If either one of them touched me, it was going to result in a rude surprise. It was certainly true that this little industrial group had extremely favorable prices to purchase the exotic spacefaring materials the defense parent had used for the fighters. And the entire design, if you looked at the blueprints of the fighters side-by-side with the mining ship, seemed a little derivative. And, since mining ships may have to operate for extended periods without resupply (as PTMC had proved on the other side of the world and in a great deal of the asteroid mining), they needed reliable power for life support, engines, and weapons. The kind of power that usually only the deep-space stealth cruisers had needed, not a decade ago. Of course a skilled pilot would be trusted with this sort of thing. Robots were cheap, they pulled power from ambient energy fields in the mines, but THIS ship would be one to use skill instead and do more than a whole swarm of drones. Did I say weapons? Well, the asteroid miners had found they could crack apart the big rocks fairly well with shaped charges fired from a good standoff. Seemed natural to mount a couple pods for launching shaped charges to the mining ship, right? And what better to cut rock, if you've got the energy to burn, than precisely removing sections with cutting lasers? For that matter, if you need a steady cleaving force on a target, how about a rotary mass-driver with explosive-tipped shells alternating with armor-piercers? It was perfectly legal to use that for mining. And since this was a craft designed to be piloted by somebody difficult to replace, they needed protection...protection from not only falling rocks, but cave-ins. And what if there was a mining accident? People got in the wrong places at the wrong times, what would happen if something expensive like this was in the wrong place when another one was cutting rock? Turns out that military-surplus armor plating, from the parent defense company, not only provided an excellent shield against lasers and explosions but the high-temperature high-strength materials involved would also let any operator drop one of these ships from orbit and it would survive the reentry undamaged. Well, if you've got that kind of power and that kind of armor, suddenly you can fly at hypersonic speeds. Of course that wasn't a design feature. Supersonic only. That was all the airframe was rated for. _

"And one of the reasons the project got shut down..."

_waxed the young man enthusiastically, standing on his tiptoes to point a finger back into one of my nacelles at the complex contour of the inside and the spike that hid the heat exchangers. _

"Was that the Council got a tipoff from, well, people think it was the gal that got passed over for being their test pilot that if the installed engines were subjected to inlet airspeeds in excess of the rated airspeed limit for long enough, at precisely the correct power setting, the material would actually heat up and melt into a different shape entirely, a shape that would let them go hypersonic, even beyond escape velocity!"

"Wow."

_Said the woman, craning to peer over the lip as well. Her name badge read Linda B, and a quick match against PTMC public databases and address books made it seem like she was in charge of vendor selection and bidding for supplies destined to their asteroid belt outposts. She'd started eying me like a piece of meat, which I was starting to get itchy about._

"Some accident, hunh? All it would have needed was an impulse drive?"

_It wasn't unheard of for a executive to have something a little special in their hangar and I could see where her mind was headed. They were both more or less right though. It was obviously no accident but the tipoff hammered the final nail into the coffin of too many coincidences. Pyros Industrial Group (admittedly an unfortunate acronym) had all the tooling in place for mass production before the skies darkened under the arrival of the very carrier their parent company had built and the factory was forcibly seized and nationalized. The Council wasn't going to stand for the clandestine manufacture of fighters that were arguably better-built than the ones their army even flew, and they came down on the parent group pretty hard. Broke it up into divisions, sold a bunch of them off. PIG went on to produce the same basic design--albeit scaled down 25%,castrated in the power plant, with genuinely restricted engines, using very light reflective armor, and armed with nothing more than cutting torches--as zero-G construction ships and for legitimate mining operations. The Pyro-GL was a fairly popular buy for a while until buyers realized that they couldn't effectively retrofit them into their personal air force, then interest dropped off. Mind you, I'd run across a few Pyro-GLs with modern engines. With military hardware hanging off them, they weren't bad. But given the public furor, the airframe still had a lousy name and reputation and you couldn't GET hardware to fit them. PIG had been under rather strict oversight for their redesign and it was quite deliberately hard to equip them with anything they weren't original with. _

"An impulse drive and they'd be totally interplanetary, totally independent, able to be produced pretty much anywhere they could refine materials or get old military gear shipped in! And look at this...the entire weapon system is modular on these, you could fit ANYTHING."

_He sounded way too happy about getting the chance to look me over. I wasn't quite sure to peg him in the enthusiast category or the obsessive one, but at least he kept his hands to himself. Dwayne L, and his biography mentioned something about having come from a cutthroat public sector job to join PTMC in the position of junior director of in-house vessel R&D. I did a little more digging. The boy had gotten a set of mercenary credentials, been part of a couple minor deployments, mostly protected from the real dangers by an influential family, and shifted to Post-Terran once he'd built a little credibility by putting his neck on the line. When it came to stray bullets or beams, there was no such thing as a minor or safe combat mission. Iiiiinteresting. _

"Look at the barrel flare of these lasers, you can see whoever owns this one put some serious cooling and uprated optics in. The wing roots are bored out enough to take anything up to modern plasma cannons, and that's the way they came off the line...PIG only made about ten of these beauties, I never thought I'd see one, much less see one that's actually used!"

_Thanks, kid._

"Linda, you might find the way the thrusters are integra...Linda?"

_She'd gone as soon as he ducked underneath the belly to stare down the barrels of the lasers on the other side, seizing the chance to make an escape. And she'd caught the next elevator already by the time he'd walked around the other side to look for her. Smart lady. She'd probably be looking up the registries and seeing how much a GX hull went for. Hey Linda? Quick hint? We're generally not for sale. The Io Institute had bought two of the prototypes and fitted them for impulse drive, with all the extra computer capacity that took. They were expensive, but the Institute had the money to burn._

"Dammit...one of the only flying GXes out there, and she doesn't care. Ah, maybe someday I'll get to take you up, you jewel."

_With a soft sigh of envy Dwayne rested his palm on my nose lightly for a moment. He touched me! Dammit, he actually touched me! I was a microsecond away from electrifying the skin armor--as an afterburner, enough of a charge into the intake air would separate it into flame and oxygen, it was good for a lot of extra thrust and a dangerous lot of extra heat--and giving him enough of a zap to leave a burn, but...I didn't. Pity, amusement, some form of affection for this kid who designed hulls himself? I'd rather pin it on being cagey and thinking that I might be able to get a favor out of Post-Terran through him someday but as he pulled his fingertips away I ran enough juice through the skin to give him a light tingle. A twitch of power to the fan motors, feathering the blades to avoid thrust production, and it gave the armor under his hand a little surge of vibration and a faint noise from the back that could be described as either a growl or a purr, depending on who you asked. Either way it was enough for him to realize he'd been 'caught', as it were, and he departed hastily for the elevator at a jog, looking wistfully backwards most of the way. I knew he'd look up the registry. But unless I needed something important, I sure wasn't going to talk to him._

_The question had inevitably come up, why didn't the Institute get a couple destroyers for the money they'd paid for the GX prototypes? Well, they already had a couple destroyers and where else would you find something that could never be built to the same standard any more , small enough for atmospheric manuevers and ground takeoff, but capable enough to hit orbital velocity, and well-armored and overpowered to a sufficient degree to keep even a novice pilot in the blue zone and out of the brown zone? ...be it the ground or their fouled pants. I didn't like to think about the circumstances under which I had gone from the body I was born in into this one, or the circumstances surrounding Jerome's....... acquisition......later legitimatized, of my hull. It was a painful, terrible, traumatic experience for the both of us, and we'd never been quite the same afterward. It had changed everything, and one of the advantages of having silicon memories was that I could lock some of them away against anything but deliberate retrieval attempts. The memory OF the memories was bad enough--to shipsee and selfsee my own death in the final moments of transfer, that godawful wrench. Blackness, stark shadows against the cratered landscape, green splatters pinwheeling away. Up until a few years ago, Jerome slept in the cockpit and it was pretty even odds which one of us would wake up screaming first. Ruthlessly I shook myself out of the cold paralysis and horror that always gripped me when I thought about the entire episode, trying to focus on what had happened to the other eight GX prototypes. _

_The rest of them had scattered very obscurely. History and time had moved on, and those few who held the remnants of my shipkind were the sort of people very good at keeping private. Large sums of money or large aggregations of government helped. Three had vanished into military research labs and try as I might their trails were tangled and mysterious. One was in a museum on Earth, always drew a crowd when they pulled it out of exhibit storage, another one was stashed on Charon. Rumor had it that the miners and research staff still flew it from time to time as the only craft that was reliable all the way out there. One had gone to a private collector who had been persuaded to sell it to a hopped-up would-be warlord. That one had been lost in action when the warlord made the mistake of playing chicken with a war-surplus heavy cruiser converted to a colony slowboat. One-half mass times vee-squared is an equal-opportunity bitch and it unsurprisingly transpired that you don't need weapons to out-bluff a heavily-armed jackass, all you need is an opposing V and a hundred thousand times the M. One was still in the hands of a private collector and the last one was...well, nobody knew, except that it had set back having impulse drives available for small craft by at least a couple decades. _

_Strip the armor off the spaceframe, tear out the engines, use the full power of the reactor to enclose the ship in a bubble of exotic particles, which made the entire thing look like a charged particle to the larger universe. It wasn't a new concept, not really, although the raw power to do it hadn't been around in anything portable for a while. Field variations, computer-controlled, meant you could angle the field to repel the universe. You could actually get a fairly decent approximation of the big C that way. The problem was that it was rough as hell on the frame. Incredible stresses unless you accelerated relatively slowly. It'd ripped lesser craft apart before during testing and development, craft and their crews. The other problem was that every particle that hit those shields degraded their effectiveness. You name it...energetic photons, stray hydrogen atoms, gamma rays. Before long you built up speed enough that the reactor couldn't crack the requisite bits out of its output faster than the field and exotic bits were being degraded, and your 'shields' went down. And you took a bit of rock dust through the cockpit at three-quarters light-speed. At least that was the theory. Needless to say, they were usable as defenses against enemy fire but not for long. And you'd melt if you tried to go that fast in atmosphere. Legend had it that the missing GX had hit .999C by now and was accelerating asympotically toward C, doomed to hurtle ever faster out that way until the reactor burned itself out or the impacts of dust eventually shredded what little was left. All anybody really knew for sure was that the craft and the poor son of a bitch inside had headed off roughly out of the ecliptic at an unholy pace once everything was turned on and the telemetry showed that the pilot had died from his own inertia tearing his heart open. Before that point, the prevailing theory had been that the mass of the ship inside the bubble was irrelevant and thus large deflections of the field were required for even slow acceleration. After that point, mass mattered a lot more in the calculations. Adjustments got smaller and smaller, and I could adjust things small enough to mimic the precise contours of a fingernail. Or my own mortal ass, editing out a dimple I'd never been fond of. The boy would never know how hard it was, projecting fields that detailed, that strangely shaped. I shattered, burnt, bisected, or vaporized a thousand dollars of fruit before I was able to first manipulate the field into something that felt like a hand, merely to rest it on his chest while he slept and bring us both a little peace. A girl could cram a lot of thinking into a few minutes, especially when done with slightly augmented hardware. Was it any wonder I make it a point to stay cheerful? That way lies madness. But up on deck 85 lay my future, my hope and my foe in the same room, and Jerome's microphone picked up a throat-clearing that could only be preparatory to making the fog of uncertainty fall away a little further._


	5. Table the Contents

Chapter 5: Table the Contents

"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything. "

-John Kenneth Galbraith

Waiting for Dravis to finish reading the files was irritating. More specifically, waiting around at all was irksome at a fundamental level. We were air support. We didn't pound the ground. You didn't hire us to loiter around on station, you hired us to maintain air superiority, or pound six kinds of annihilation out of something that you didn't want around any more. I could only imagine what kind of entertainment Jenny was finding in Post-Terran's computer systems or the hanger folks. Probably a few oglers, probably a bit of mischief. It was impossible to keep her out of trouble and not a whole lot of fun to try, so I just sat there cooling my heels and trying to not show too many signs of boredom. Oh, it was plain enough I had him over a barrel by this point--he wouldn't be taking this much time if there were any other qualified applicants, not for a callout this urgent, and we both knew it. He may have been a weasel in a slave-collar shirt but I was pretty sure at this point he was my weasel. She always hated this type with a passion I never quite understood, but for all that we'd known each other she still had her enigmas that I doubted I'd ever learn about. Nevertheless, I knew I couldn't play the power-politics game too well on the kind of level that ol Sammy here was conditioned to do, so I did it my way. Swagger and smile. Clean your claws in public, making sure people notice the elaborately sharpened points, act nonchalant. "Speak softly and carry a big stick" was standard practice and came with the eighth of cat. Stick the knife in from the front, or act like you were going to, and they'd never notice the gleam off the blade at their back. I never claimed to be that sophisticated, but you stuck with what worked. And right now it'd worked, because I was here and he was reviewing our suitability for whatever hell he was contemplating throwing us into. Finally, he cleared his throat as he looked up, smiling. Another false mask.

"Mr. Corbell, I've been going over your files and I believe that you and your prototype Pyros may be capable of accomplishing our objectives. Needless to say, anything further said in this office is subject to our highest level of legal protection, any unauthorized disclosure will be..._severely_ penalized."

Oh, the things I wanted to say. What was there he could do to scare me? Threaten to kill my family, my fiance, sue me to the point I had no assets left, bar me from working for PTMC again? The stars knew those would all be such big changes from the way my life was going now. I laughed, only a little mockingly.

"Please, Sam, call me Jerome and skip the boilerplate, neither I nor my secretary are strangers to secrecy in this line of work..."

We were stranger than he knew, in secret, but it hardly counted. He laughed once to be polite, that sort of laugh that was just as solid as a styrofoam cup and just as trustworthy as one filled with boiling nitric acid.

"Actually, Mr. Corbell, I would rather we keep things on a more formal basis for a contract of this degree of severity."

Idiot. Handshakes and understandings got you far further in this world than boilerplate. You only let the underlings wrangle out the boilerplate once you got the principals on board. You fell back on boilerplate up front when you were planning to twist, bend, decieve, and in general exploit the signatory. I'd never been much good with the formal, and taking the human element out of this negotiation--of course--left me once again stranded and a bit out of my depth. Slowly, I began to understand just what Jenny had against these empty placeholders where a human spirit and pride ought to live. Did this man have a family? A loving wife or husband? Children? Relatives? Did he go home and open up to them as he refused to do at work? And if he did, wouldn't that make him even more contemptibly selfish? There was something in that, something that was quietly beginning to bother me. He'd read the entire file, he must've seen that Dad worked for them for so many years and died yesterday. A simple "Sorry about your parents" would have been nice. Some little comment from file data that was personal, today of all days when everybody with a heart was a Brazilian. But he led off with a comment about of all things my ship, and not even the rarity, merely a minor detail about machinery. And nobody had ever called them a Pyros.

I nodded and he started talking, but I never heard the first few sentences. Instead, as I looked across the table into his impassive expression, reciting PTMC's own dirty laundry without any degree of personal involvement or interest, I felt such a upswelling of pity for the poor bastard that his words slipped right away. He was in an office in a crowded space station that was nevertheless twice the size of the welded-together cargo containers I called a home, his suit alone probably cost more money than a target-seeking missile for my metallic love, and by all indications he was what you'd aspire to be as a kid. But at what price? He'd made a Faustian bargain whether he realized it or not. We're all to some degree responsible for how our lives turn out, passive acceptance of the winds of fate included and if I wanted to stay sane I had to go on thinking that Sammy D as a kid would be horrified at what Mr. Dravis had lost to get that office and that suit. I always believed that the world was much more simple as a child, as no doubt did we all, and I still felt it's true. Kids understand that the world's just people. The entire world and all the colonies are just Steve and Carla and Brian and Nikki and all their friends and enemies, and there's no power structures and no agreements that exist independently of people agreeing to follow along. Out of fear or belief, that's how it all works. You grow up, you get taught ideals of civilization, government, like any of it exists as an ideal to itself, and you start believing in 'the system'. Maybe I'd never grown up. Maybe Raspberry and Thomas had taught me that the best way to work within the system and go outside of it when you needed to was to treat the people in it as people. Jenny had come to that from the other side, from what I'd been able to piece together, being virtually indoctrinated in the system even as a kid until she believed in it, and then figured out that the smallest building block of the system was the person. Dravis believed in the system, wholeheartedly. He'd sacrificed himself to the lie in exchange for comfort and oblivion. He was pitiable, yes, but also very dangerous because of it. Zealots were never good bosses.

"...and apparently our defense robots did not function to specifications. Our in-system mining stations are in unknown hands."

That's what you get for using robots. They'd replace me with one, given half the chance. I'd been wondering why they hadn't, but it looked like the automation wasn't up to the job. I felt a bit better about having unconsciously tuned out even during something this important...Dravis' droning voice would have made Armaggedon sound boring. On the viewscreen to his left brief schematics of the defenses flickered, too fast for me to get any relevant details and too slowly for me to get any useful information about how complete their defense grids had even been. The particular shade of electric blue stung my eyes and even the air in here was too sterile for human lungs, dry and a little acrid from the scrubbers. I still didn't understand why he'd not put this information in the initial call, suitably encoded. Still...Post-Terran had an ungodly lot of insystem stations. Every moon, every planet, from here to Pluto and a bunch in the belt. That was a big problem, all right. Was it all of them that were seized? That would've been a reason for the paranoia, certainly.

"Your Israeli-made Pyro-GX appears to be sufficiently modified for this mission...your manifest lists you as carrying a standard supply of AV-42 "Avenger" concussion missiles and a main battery of four CG-735 industrial argon-cyanide lasers in addition to a GAU-98 Vulcan cannon in a tracking pod..."

So glad he approved. Jenny harrumphed indelicately into my inner ear.

_"Looks like he's a closet hardware-worshipping junkie."_

She sounded almost scandalized.

_"He's practically drooling all over that desk."_

I wondered how he'd react if he learned the main armament was a pair of beam-split AV-667 military lasers off the point-defense turrets of a UEG superdreadnaught. Even at half power after the split, each beam was still about a third again as powerful as the most recent Ceres Group industrial/mercenary cutting laser. Never put all your cards on the table for what you could do...and he didn't have the military and mercenary and government connections to get the real file. The Io Institute had that and they were a little close-lipped. And Jenny'd done some horse trading since then that I didn't want to know the details of. The missiles, well, a good salvo of high velocity exploding presents was all very well and good, but they weren't the only ones in the wing pods. We were armed for elephant, including two radiation trefoil icons down at the very bottom of the missile inventory display that I didn't want to think too closely about. Really, the readout we sent to clients was a bare-faced lie. The Vulcan cannon was accurate enough, or at least it had started off life that way. At some point during the hull's prior life the Institute had gotten rather tired of buying so many ammunition belts and had the innards converted to something more like a mass driver. The barrels still spun for cooling in atmosphere, but the design of the receiver was just a little different. I'd spent a fun couple of weekends once seeing just what that sharp breech would slice off in bullet-shaped chunks. Disposed of a few old boots, some scrap metal, even bits of cracked armor plating. Turns out that with that much juice to spare, anything ferrous could be jolted up to a hell of a speed and spat out downrange. And if it wasn't ferrous, the massive pulse of electricity would probably catch it on fire, and the next time that barrel spun around it'd probably slam something that WAS ferrous in behind the lump of, say, your sandwich. You could leave the feed tube clamped on and feed bullets down, tungsten penetrators or uranium sabots or sodium-cored plastic-jacketed rounds for that plasma napalm effect but in a pinch release the clamps to the tube. It'd fire the material of the tube too. Or whatever you had handy.

"..and your installed impulse drive will let you travel outsystem with discretion and appropriate speed. You will have multiple objectives on this mission--without any intelligence data on exactly who and what is behind this, we cannot risk our operations being further taken over. "

And here was where he was about to get to the whole meat of this mission. Infiltration? Escorting some bithead technical sorts? Special PTMC task force that wanted an overwatch against who knows what? Whatever it was, it really sounded like we were too small for it if they needed this done on every PTMC facility between here and Charon.

"...you will keep the invading forces from spreading further, destroy as many invaders as possible, rescue any survivors, and destroy all infected mines via overloading their reactors. This can only be done by a Material Defender in situ..."

I couldn't have heard that right! Contradictory objectives were a normal part of any mission designed by committee, but they were the Post-Terran MINING Corporation because they mined things. Everything. Everywhere. And Sammy here was telling me I'd need to blow away anything that'd been tainted regardless of whether I cleared it out again or not. Jenny's comment this morning was the absolute gospel truth--not that I doubted her, but this was more than a significant portion, this was about everything! I could hear Jenny swearing in her liquid-sounding native tongue like no language I'd ever heard spoken on Earth, softly and reverently. She only slipped like that in the most unusual circumstances, and this one counted. We were talking trillions, quadrillions of dollars of hardware and tens of millions of jobs. Blown away. Under my guns. I didn't remember it, but I was standing suddenly, the chair fallen over backwards into the carpet. I stared down at Dravis, claws unconsciously extended and raking slightly against the hard stone of the desktop as my palms braced my leaning forward.

"Are you fucking serious?! Irregardless of securing the site?!"

I guess I was shouting, the end of my vestigal tail flicking, but he just nodded calmly. Either he was stone-cold, heartless, or heavily medicated. I began to understand just why Captain Garcia had come storming out of this office like his ball hair was on fire. Tunnel-clearing, with unknown assailants everywhere, and if you saw a single indication of trouble you went straight for the fusion plant and shot it full of holes so the entire place went up in a gigantic thermonuclear fireball. Now rescue the survivors first. Now do this for PTMC's entire back catalog. It was the job of a lifetime, a very short lifetime. You couldn't DO it with a destroyer. A carrier and a squadron of fighters, maybe. A deathwish and a lot of execute-on-sight-for-possession nukes, maybe. I...I couldn't swear vehemently enough to express my reaction to this, so I just hissed at the man wordlessly, all the hair on my body standing on end, before I got control again. A bit embarrassed, I turned away and picked up the chair, sitting down in it again before I trusted myself to say _anything_.

"Listen...Samuel...I understand the difficulty involved here with the logistics of potentially nuking all your goddamn mines and all from the inside!"

Deep breath. Calm down.

"....but this sounds like an operation much better suited for the United Earth military. If it were my op...a carrier group, hit every planetary facility and every moon facility at once on one planet at a time, send a guided missile in and through with sensors set to pick up life forms. Map that against the known tunnel plans and recorded personnel IDs, get a couple troopships down in there to hold the perimeter and rescue your folks, neutralize or rescue the unknowns, get the hell out! Send in another guided missile, blow the plant from safety!"

Dravis just stared. I tried again.

"This is completely unhinged, completely insane!"

Dravis just stared.

"....can't you blow the reactors remotely from the colony or orbital uplink?..."

Dravis was still staring. I shook my head in exasperation.

"All right. All right. I'm done but I'm still in your office. Talk to me, dammit."

Jenny's cursing had tapered off and she was uncharacteristically silent.

"Formally speaking, the strategic weak spot of our mines is indeed their fusion reactors. They're deep in each mine, and completely automated. Normally we would be able to blow them from orbit, but all uplinks to our stations have been severed at the source. Knocking out the reactors will cause a system-wide meltdown within a matter of seconds. And when I say system-wide, I mean complete vaporization. Getting out before the mine blows should be foremost on your mind."

_"And foremost on the minds of any poor slobs we haven't rescued yet."_

Jenny commented soberly. Part of me wasn't sure Dravis was listening to me at all. His speech was a touch disjointed.

"These are the emergency escape hatches."

A schematic flashed on the screen, animating a hatch and its distinctive appearance.

"They are hardwired to open in case of a reactor that begins to operate in an abnormal service regimen. It may be wise to locate these before you forcibly initiate uncontrolled reactor power excursions."

"_Don't melt the place down around you before you get your exit strategy sorted."_

I shushed her because Dravis wasn't stopping.

"As for the matter of the military approach, Mr. Corbell, it HAS ALREADY BEEN TRIED."

I was shocked to see the flicker of something very maniacal in his eyes then. If this wasn't his natural composure and he was doped to the eyelids with something then I wanted some of it as a sedative for those abandon-sleep-ye-who-lie-here nights.

"Given that your father was a loyal PTMC employee and that you are highly recommended for discretion--in light of yesterday's incident, I believe some context may be welcome. We lost contact with our lunar mines yesterday. A Material Defender was dispatched to investigate the situation, of course, once we established it was no communications fault."

I wondered who had been sent before they got around to pulling our files out of their databases. Probably somebody who wasn't up to the task. Possibly somebody we knew. I didn't ask if it was a internal security investigator or one of the mercenaries PTMC liked to keep on retainer.

"Based on fragmented telemetry from Material Defender 1031, the infected mines appear to be manufacturing new robots."

He continued, the display screen going blank and flickering before echoing a standard gun camera mount feed. The unknown pilot was moving quick and quiet until a mining drone came into view. A tinny roar of static swamped the transmission as a ball of glowing orange plasma spit from the drone where a cutting torch would usually have been mounted. The image froze, highlighting the drone and rotating it.

"Most are based on the designs of common mining mechs."

Playback continued, the unknown pilot jinking wildly to evade the burst from what looked like a souped-up pulse cutter. It drifted on by the ship harmlessly, not homing in. The picture twitched violently for a moment and the drone was smashed back against the nearest wall, ruined by the impact of a brief burst of explosive cannon rounds. Pieces sparked, armor and fragments twirling slowly away in the Lunar gravity, and the view heeled around as the pilot darted down the wide corridor left where ore had been mined out. The next intersection got a left turn, following some unseen mapped route. A squat brown hulk was scant feet in front of the camera mount, image swollen to the point where almost all that was visible was the business end of a folding-fin missile launcher. It spat flame and a missile, the pilot rocking hard to the left and up. The hulk vanished, and the view switched to a rear view of it retreating as it spun around. Two more missiles flamed out from its twin missile launchers and the view went to a wireframe rotation again for a moment.

"But expect to see completely new ones as well. Whatever has invaded the mines appears to adapt rapidly."

The fleeing pilot made it around two slight bends in the corridor, out of line of sight of the missiles. They exploded relatively harmlessly against the walls, but the shaped charges cracked enough rocks off to solidly clip whatever poor 1031 was flying. The view rocked dizzyingly as the camera switched to the front. They were coming around to make an attack run on the missile hulk but just as the ship began to accelerate it lurched and slowed like it had run into something. A man's terrified scream came over the little screen's speakers, mingling with the noise of rending metal in a terrible soprano crescendo of destruction. The view cut back to the rear, a gigantic green triangular robot visible swinging a glitteringly pointed cutting arm down toward the camera. It connected. The scream stopped. The screen went black, then shifted to the extrapolated image of the green murderer. Diamond-edged swingarms...fantastic.

"While none of the internal monitor systems are responding, defense satellites have spotted a few of the modified mechs near the surface."

I was only paying half attention to the screen at this point as it ran down the known armament of some of these robots. You could only see so many readouts of "argon welding laser, mass driver rifle, pulse cutter, missile launcher" and thicknesses of armor listed before you started getting a little upset. Safely piloting a corporate wastebarge was actually starting to sound attractive right now.

Dravis continued with that same cold glassy expression.

"Most of our information is sketchy at this point. We will continue to analyze the data you acquire and keep you updated as we can. Be aware that we have witnessed advanced intelligence in many of these mechs...it's safe to assume they will continue to develop new weaponry and behaviors as you progress, but of course you'll see the real evidence soon enough."

He could be more encouraging, but then he'd be shooting me now.

"After the...cessation of telemetry from MD-1031 we officially requested UEG military assistance. As you had suggested, the UEG sent in a recon missile followed by a dropship. They lost contact with their dropship after it had fought off several coordinated attacks--in waves--by our mining robots and after the marines had by all accounts rescued PTMC personnel. Ten minutes after that, the pulse that destroyed Buenos Aires was focused to Earth via our transmitter dish and that of the colony immediately outside the power station. The UEC carrier launched a nuclear strike as the only stand-off weapon guaranteed to cleanse the warren before further attacks could be carried out. And then they bombarded everything with a power generator in the colony. Life support. Heating. Water pumps. Everything, Mr. Corbell, that lived or moved."

The corner of his mouth twitched once as he steepled his fingers. They were pale and almost translucent, like the hands of a corpse. Not for the first time I wished I had proper ears like Mom, that could lie flat back against my skull. I had no idea the situation was that bad. Nobody did. PTMC's takeover had apparently precipated the disaster that wiped thirteen million people on Earth out in a few searing seconds and resulted in the death of tens of thousands more as collateral damage. Power generation and transmission was supposed to be foolproof. There were supposed to be countless safeties that wouldn't engage the transfer beam unless it had a firm lock on a receiver signal from the grids below, and safeties to interrupt any sort of power surge. The fact that those safeties had resulted in no major accidents for a hundred years was the reason that orbital power transmission was catching on so widely. If this got out—that any colony, any population, within beam distance of a power transmitter or mining power receptor grid that could be set to relay—the ensuing panic would devastate human colonization and topple the UEG into a series of rioting feuding panicky mobs all over Earth. And every other colony.

"_Oh fuuuuuck." _

Jenny was working it out too, probably quicker than I could.

"_It'd be the end of united humanity either way. And there's no time left."_

I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but Dravis steamrollered right along.

"As you and I both know the military is not given to leaving active threats, shall we say, unaddressed."

Very few people accused me of being exceptionally intelligent, but it didn't take too much to put this together. The air felt like the cold of space now and I was afraid if I didn't think about breathing I just wouldn't any more. If this op was handed over to the military, they'd do just what they'd done on the Moon. They'd do it everywhere. They'd have to, with the civilian loss of life deemed acceptable. The government would have to turn autocratic before letting the truth out, if it ever did. The people would still be rioting in the streets and it was even odds that they'd be suppressed before they tore the ruling bodies apart. If Post-Terran pretended the only mine affected was the lunar one, people would still be at risk and the news would get out soon enough anyway when the ore shipments stopped arriving at processing stations or transport depots all over the solar system.

"Which means the only remaining option for decisive action under PTMC's authority and scope is systemic infiltration. Our remaining defense robotics have smuggled common replacement parts and some weapons into the mines. At present, the invader has not been alerted. We are confident that you will have the advantage of a surprise attack, at least until you enter the mines. There appear to be no communications between mines, however at that point, you should expect a heavy counter offensive."

An incredulous laugh slipped past my lips.

"Guess I should be thankful for small mercies, hunh? Here I was starting to think I'd have no advantages at all."

There was that twitch again. The smart money was shifting toward a combination of shock and several kinds of medication, some perhaps more informal and sold by the bottle, to explain his attitude. I wanted to leave his office so bad I could taste it. Every rational sane part of me was screaming at me to get out. Call it crazy, but I could even at that moment feel Jenny's terrible dread, submerging me in an ocean of thick terror like a waking nightmare. I turned toward the door slowly, half rising and with my hand outstretched for the salvation of the motion sensor. The corridors. The hangar bay. The welcome sky, and freedom to live the rest of our inevitably short lives in peace. I could almost taste it…to turn my back on this suicide and walk away would have been as easy as standing up the rest of the way. Dravis regarded me impassively, having passed somewhere through madness back to an icy degree of unsaneness. I couldn't even tell whether Jenny's little noises were choked sobs or chuckles.

I sat back down.


	6. Carte Flinch

Chapter Six: Carte Flinch

"A man does what he must-

in spite of personal consequences,

in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures

-and that is the basis of all morality." -- JFK

Dravis blinked, the first time in a while I'd noticed him do it. He was expecting me to bolt, had been expecting it since the start of this little disaster revelation. Hell, I couldn't blame him. I was expecting me to have bolted too. Merely the fact that he was looking for an infiltrator still was sufficient to point up that he hadn't found anybody crazy enough to take the job. By his own admission and the footage I'd already seen this wasn't really the sort of thing that lent itself to repeated attempts, not unless you had SPF nine million sunblock and enough of it to go around. So unless I left, it was going to be us, throwing our lives away in the biggest damndest attempt to save collective bacon that I could even imagine. I needed a distraction.

"Listen….Mr. Dravis. I think I'm in. I think I'm in because I'm being unbelievably foolish and because nobody else has been willing to, and because if you didn't think I had a decent chance I wouldn't be here right now and because if you had anybody else they'd be in and gone and you wouldn't be putting up with me right now. But let's talk some specifics. The call mentioned eight figures, hinted at salvage and resupply. I'm going to tell you right now that if you want me to be your one-man army and probably not survive, it won't be cheap. And I refuse to compromise anything on the back end that you'll be providing. The fee's simple. One percent of net revenues, or one billion bucks, whichever's bigger."

Jenny sucked in her breath audibly, probably shocked at my audacity.

"_Are you fucking crazy, it was eight figures not goddamn well nine!"_

She was right, of course, but it was nine now. Dravis just kept looking at me as I continued.

"I need to talk with somebody with wartime hull construction experience and the clout and speed to get something simple built or allocated. I'll give the specs to whoever that winds up being. And I need it YESTERDAY. You give me blanket liability to destroy PTMC property per our discussion, filed and recorded with the Guild, the UEG, copies to both our private data stores, classified any way you need it to be. As for salvage, I'll use what I find, take what I need from the places I stop at." I paused for a moment, scratching my everpresent stubble. The laundry list was starting to get long. Long lists were dangerous. If he said no at any point, I was gone, because otherwise it'd be suicide without even the tiny chance of success. "Resupply and operations. I want a blank check. Period. Got me? I don't have time to sweet-talk every ignorant supply quartermaster from here to Pluto. I don't have time to wait in traffic control patterns unless I think it'll help with an infil. None of us do. I want a directive from the director of PTMC that I get whatever I deem needed, no questions asked, be it in resources or manpower, absolute crash priority, until either the mission is completed, the contract is breached, or I go out in a blaze of fantastically ill-advised glory. I want a guarantee of Post-Terran assuming any and all liability and responsibility for any actions I take, barring those specifically forbidden by the Berlin-DC Accords. And I want to trade chairs with you."

There were a thousand objections that should've been pouring from his close-lipped mouth. Any one of those terms was a legal and financial pitfall, all of them together amounted to unparalleled power imbalances between a mercenary and his employer. By those conditions I could legitimately request an Earthshaker missile—the kind PTMC remote platforms used to fragment small planetoids and that the military faced severe public inquiry for deploying against even hardened targets—and launch it against Shiva station, making the argument that by downlinking the telemetry the entire station might have already been corrupted—and walk away legally unscathed despite having murdered tens of thousands. Although this week doing so would be a mere footnote.

Dravis sat there for another long moment, then glanced down to his desk and the readout for the merest fraction of a moment. I had to believe it was nothing more than a nervous habit. Jenny was laughing quietly in the back of my skull, soft and disbelieving.

"_If you ram that through, and if we live, why do I have a feeling there's a nasty 'accident' in our future?"_

Samuel Dravis, the tyrannosaurus of Shiva Station, the great lizard king of HR, a man higher than my father had ever even stumbled across much less spoke with…stood up.

He gestured to his chair silently, waiting for me to supplant him in his own throne as possibly the only one who could save him and his company. He, too, had taken almost no time to decide, and voiced no objections to my terms. It was really that bad.

I waved him back down with a half-smile. "I threw that last part in to make sure you were listening…"

He paused for a moment, then sat back down again, mouth twitching as if he wanted to either smile or eat my heart and wasn't quite sure of the best order.

"A very clever jape, Mr. Corbell. I doubt you're aware of this, but the military's research division performs advanced weaponry development in several of our mines. Your Pyros appears modified enough to make use of any new technology you find. It's apparent you'll need everything you can get to eliminate this threat."

That alone gave me pause and a lot of it. My license and credentials were up to date. I could use and own military hardware, sure. There was nothing that stopped me from having, say, my own superdreadnaught. But where it got tricky was what the military actually was willing to sell. Most acquisitions were done through legitimate markets—say if Australia's contribution of self-propelled artillery to the UEG forces was voted as in need of being improved by a majority of the council, Australia would have to obtain permission to export the artillery pieces for local defense use (and if it was good enough for the UEG forces to have used, it was generally required to be somehow handicapped in a way very difficult to undo) such that nation-state defensive forces would be unable to use the same hardware they were fighting against and faced both a numbers and effectiveness gap. Once Australia had proven that its contributions in need of upgrade had been sold or scrapped or repurposed, it would begin the process of designing and submitting new hardware proposals to the UEG—and if they were capable of successful interoperation with everybody else's stuff and were still better than the previous artillery pieces, the new production run started up.

A lot of us had old hardware. Some of us had really old hardware, by military standards. If you couldn't afford to get it from the first obsolescence, you picked it up when the vehicles the local defense forces were using started to get aged and fell out of service. Failing that, you could always sweet-talk some collector or private individual who had bought something that had been rotated out of defense force use and spend what you saved on system upgrades, but that left you scrambling to catch up with the curve. The trick was in getting fresher stuff. The 'scrapped' condition was a lifesaver. Arrange a workable trade with a quartermaster—say, a case of good whiskey for an admiral's party—and it was possible that some of the material marked down as expended or scrapped might find its way to you with a correct bill of sale and correct serial numbers. It was also possible that some of that material might be in better condition than the claim was. Training losses of equipment or excess purchase orders or simply unused reserves were always good for a few spares, and occasionally you'd run across the sort of skeeze who would sell the hardware right out from under the armed forces that were supposed to be using it. Those types didn't last long. But as an informal barter/favor system, it happened a lot more frequently than the military or the mercenaries would really admit to. The officers never really knew, they just knew that a good steward or quartermaster would make sure that the fighting forces had the best gear that could be gotten and as for the stuff they'd been originally issued? Well, it had all been accounted for in a traceably legal fashion. That was mostly Jenny's bailiwick, fortunately.

But the odds of being able to acquire something both modern enough to be usable and old enough to be legally sold went up steeply as you started to look for bigger and bigger things. Sammy-boy was offering me the keys to the kingdom and I couldn't figure his angle for the world. If the mines were going up anyway, no doubt the military would appreciate salvage of their little toys. I mean, I was qualified to use them. But I couldn't keep them. Did he think I was going to stop in the middle of a pitched gunfight, pull tools out of my ass, and install something experimental in the Pyro that might blow up, melt down, or just fail to be effective? I sure couldn't log the transfer. Was there a reciprocity contingency with PTMC that would let things like this be seized in case of emergency, or rather 'handled and evacuated by designated PTMC representatives with appropriate clearances?' I'd have to bounce it off Jenny. I wasn't sure there was anything she wanted, we had a hull about crammed to capacity and then some as it was.

"I make no guarantees I'll grab anything, or be able to use anything, but I'll keep it in mind if the opportunity seems right."

I said, putting back together the pistol I'd fieldstripped what seemed like days ago.

"Anything else I'll be getting that you can think of? And where would you suggest I start?"

There wasn't any time for anything any more.

"You'll also earn high recognition indeed--but recognition doesn't improve the situation. You will purge the inner planets, then swing outbound, heading for Pluto. You will be able to rearm at the orbital PTMC processing stations."

Something was very off here. Jenny had hissed the first time she saw Samuel, putting the message across in a language I viscerally understood and I was beginning to agree. For him to authorize the military scavenging was desperation that could rather easily be spun as treasonous, and I COULDN'T get recognition for this job. If you told people what you did and why, you'd be right back in the overthrow-the-government outraged mob scenario. Recognition from whom? The military? The UEG? As long as I had a billion in my bank account, I could give less than a fig who in the inner circles of power knew my name. What recognition did you need at that point? Quantity has a quality all its own. What was his game?

"...and while I will have the appropriate directives filed as requested before you launch from Shiva station, we feel you should know that intelligence reports indicate the convergence point of the robot invasion force apparently being constructed in our mines at this time is Earth."

My stomach turned again. You'd think he would mention the important part at the start of the briefing. Of course, to PTMC, their mines are the important part. I keep forgetting that. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of reacting, not this time. But this little interview was at an end. Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, what had I gotten us into this time? Dravis stood again. His expression was the kind you crossed the street to stay away from, even if you were armed. The kind of person who could do anything at all with no reason…a mad dog, icily civil and having just given the orders for his power base to be cut from under him. I wouldn't be happy until I had Jenny's cockpit between me and that dead face. I stood as well, I couldn't help but. I didn't want to be caught at a disadvantage.

"That is all I have for you, Material Defender one zero three _two_. Prepare for your descent."

"_Into Hell…"_

Jenny whispered. I had the feeling that she'd be right yet again. We had a lot to talk about.

"Yeah, great working with you, Sammy."

I didn't have to like being referred to as the latest expendable PTMC mercenary.

"I'll buy you a drink if I make it back."

And I was gone. My skin crawled to turn my back on him, even for a moment. The walk out to the corridor, bright lights and soft carpeting, seemed to take forever and when that thick black door slid soundlessly shut it felt like I'd stepped outside under the warm glow of the sun and into thick grass. I wanted to take off my boots and dance. Hell, I wanted to take off my jumpsuit and roll around in freedom. Instead, I did the even harder thing. Subvocally, I commented the first thing that came to mind.

"All in all, I think that went pretty well."

The response was profane, obscene, and predictable. Jenny swore a blue streak (so to speak) as I walked back down the corridor. She cursed Dravis in English, lasting until I'd gotten on the next elevator and most of the way back across the pylon to the hangar pillar we were docked in. She cursed PTMC in German, only half of which I could make out, the rest of the way across the pylon and all the way down to deck 67. She cursed the idea of mining with autonomous robots in Spanish for the next fifteen decks of travel, then started in on me in her mysteriously beautiful and incomprehensible native language. Years ago I'd gone matching a sample of her speech against the recorded languages of all Earth's colonies that kept in communication, seeded via impulse slowboats that were a generation in transit. Nothing came back as a match. She only would admit that she was from 'out there' and clammed up when pushed. I waited her out as the lift continued downward—she couldn't run out of breath, just imagination or fury. When the lift stopped at the bottom of the hangar and I got out she stopped. A pair of stocky ladies wearing PTMC security uniforms waited for me to exit and I had a moment of adrenaline before they simply passed me and got into the lift, going upward and out of sight.

"I know, I know. It's asinine, but if we don't do it, what other poor bastard will?"

The hangar floor wasn't that crowded now, inevitably. The admin shuttle still sat next to Jenny, pinging occasionally as it cooled down, and it sparked an idea in my mind. Jenny's cockpit hissed up as I paced closer to her, vaulting easily up into the cockpit and flipping the toggle that would close it again. We needed a little privacy.

As soon as it had sealed the interior of the cockpit from observation, a furious image sprang up in front of me, life-sized and accommodating as much of her as would have fit in the cockpit. She faced me from point-blank range, kneeling with her legs to either side of mine, in a position that was achingly suggestive if the mood and the reality had been different.

"_If you think I'm pissed at you, you're only a little right, so get that out of your head. You're throwing your life away, my second life away, but it's for about the most justifiable cause I can even pretend to think of."_

She snapped, projecting her voice from her image instead of through my close, I could really appreciate the level of detail. Everything about her was flawless, unchanged from that day, down to the slightly pointed tips of her ears. Even the odd upward sweep of her eyebrows was reproduced, individual hairs visible. It was silly, boyish I knew, but I had to still fight to keep a smile off my face just to see her so animated. So to speak.

"_I'm not pissed about anything important. Just this goddamn no-win scenario. It's being a great human for a bunch of lousy ones. Probably get a whole chestful of medals for this. Posthumously."_

I did smile then. It was possible to smile again. Couldn't hold it back any longer. I knew we were a team, knew we got along at that subconscious level, but that office and that man had me questioning everything. She hadn't vetoed anything during the meeting and I had no illusions that if she had any showstopping objections she would have. Mom told me once that the harder it was, the better it was. She was talking about decisions and the relative rightness of paths, but it didn't stop her from swatting Dad when he commented 'that's what she said'. Other than the incidental lesson of fire-and-duck, it was a good point. And the decision hadn't been an easy one. She saw me smile, though, and I braced for another burst of fire. But it didn't come. Instead her expression softened and she sighed, shaking her head in residual exasperation.

"_Look…no regrets, right? We've had as good a life as we can manage to make for ourselves. A lot of good times. Lots of fun. Lots of love and ordinance expended. I honestly don't think it's possible to survive this but we'll go out trying for a nine-figure payoff and trying to keep humanity together. And we'll be together. Like always."_

Jenny's image winked out as she leaned forward, closing her eyes. I did the same. I could feel her against me then, her shapely front pressing up against the medals on the front of my jumpsuit. Smart money would've been on the degree of pushback I felt against me being exactly calibrated to what her weight had been, but it was familiar and comfortable. I felt hands on my shoulders, fingers gently digging into the cordedly tense muscles, and my arms unthinkingly wrapped around what I was willing to swear felt like her slender upper torso sheathed in the nylon fabric of the jumpsuit the image had affected. I pulled the feeling closer—how could I not?—and the pressure of her against my chest increased correspondingly. It was hard to predict which one of us was the first to lean forward, but I felt her lips on mine in such wrenching detail I could tell they were parted. I could feel them flattened against her teeth as she kissed me and I kissed her. God help me, I kissed the force projection. It wasn't the most pleasant thing in the world and made every hair on my body stand on end as residual energy bled off and into me, but then again the tingle had its enjoyable points. She sighed then, a wiggling manifesting under my hands and intriguingly down my torso, until I felt the distinctive sensation of her tucking her head under my chin and settling in.

"_Not to mention I'd have liked a little more time to work on textures and field bleedoff."_

It was a little bit cranky, and I could understand the emotion. I had resigned myself to never feeling her sweet touch again and to have something that was so close, so painfully close, was almost a mixed blessing. With my eyes closed, she was getting good enough that I could forget the grim reality. It was the kind of thing that made you want to keep them closed.

"No regrets here, love. Listen, I don't think we should move from this exact spot until Sammy-boy gets those directives issued. Wouldn't want to overstep my authority."

Jenny giggled quietly. I don't know how she did it but I could feel a rhythmic half-there feathery touch against my exposed neck where I'd left the jumpsuit unzipped. It was probably a dusting of those exotic particles that provided shielding, annihilating themselves as they touched my skin or the air. But it sure felt like breathing, and for that I was willing to risk a little cancer if I survived long enough to get it and if the particles were even dangerous.

"_Don't bullshit me, mister, you mean you don't think that __**I**__ should move from this exact spot. That's your problem, you don't think. Always too physical."_

A thoughtful pause, and an evil chuckle.

"…_.mind, not that I ever complained, not that it's at all spurred texture research and development…"_

You just couldn't take her anywhere. Nevertheless, it was a moment of peace that I never wanted to end and that we both desperately needed. For all the little minx claimed to be from 'out there' and to regard humanity as a funny sort of flea circus, nobody but nobody stayed sane without the touch of a fellow sack of singing meat once in a while. Then something went beep, just as I was starting to finally relax.

"…_oh for fuck's sake, there it is. I could've lived without that jackass actually following through so quickly. I'll just read it to you, that way we can stay like this for just a little bit longer. I'll skip the list of mines unless you're morbidly curious. Three on the moon to start off with. We'll worry about the rest later. This order is nonsensical—Venus, Mercury, Mars, then a stopover at one of the big Belt stations before doing the gas giant moon run."_

Mentally I added an item to the checklist of supplies that would need to be refilled. Snuggles. Assuming we made it to the lunar processing station after the first mine, after all.

"…_let's see, blah blah blah, PTMC directive CMD-AC104 335. That's a mouthful. To MD-1032, MP Station Shiva, Earth Orbit, from PTMC Headquarters. Looks like you're stuck with that callsign. Report to hangar 1 at 10:30 for immediate ship prep and launch. Proceed to lunar processing station above mine MN0012 for level 1 descent and initial insertion. Contact with science outpost lost two days ago, intelligence indicates low infestation. Destruction of primary reactor core is imperative. Be aware of hostage situations and proceed with caution. Subsequent destinations for cleansing and rescue are as follows. …blah blah blah, it goes on and on… The contract referenced explicitly waives all requirements of compliance with PTMC regulations and protocol barring standard contract provisions. This directive reiterates that unlimited support of any PTMC facility or employee be conferred in furtherance of the overall objective. Furthermore in the event that the actions of MD1032 taken to achieve the stated objective contravene applicable local statutes PTMC assumes all legal responsibility for said actions. PTMC reserves the right to pursue legal action against MD1032 should the actions in violation of said statutes be deemed by a joint board of arbitration unnecessary for the mission at large. ….buried somewhere in here is language about the arbitration, looks like it's not the usual screwjob. Guild mercs and PTMC directors and UEG judges in an equal mixture. So don't go blowing up Shiva or shooting Dravis. God, if only! …hmm, lessee, that's about it other than the footer. It's cross-filed in all the right places, signed by all the right people. Now let's have a chat. Tell me about the hostages."_

She showed no inclination to get up. And I wasn't inclined to ask her to move. Suited me just fine.

"I'm glad you asked. They can't ride in here, there's no room for a cargo claw even. But that admin shuttle looks pretty good, doesn't it? Like it'd seat about 50? On-board systems smart enough to take a course you send or follow or stay back? I believe they've got a decent supply of chaff and flares, gotta keep those unimportant mid-level managers safe, and I know they're air-tight."

I could feel Jenny shift a bit at that, getting a little more comfortable. As if it caused her any discomfort to stay in one place too long…most likely a lot of her behavior was just habitual, but neither of us wanted to think about it more than we had to.

"_You may have a good idea there. They're fast enough to keep up at the best speed we can probably manage through mine tunnels and the dimensions aren't much wider than my wingtips. Plus they're going to be at pretty much every processing station, at the very least at the local colonies. What's your plan for infil? I figure we pair with the admin shuttle if we're coming from the stations, do a normal approach run like we're escort muscle even though I'd be remote-piloting it, fake some sort of inflight emergency and touch down somewhere near the mine entrance or the colony spaceport if it's close. Hide behind it for cover, if no robots come swarming out to fry us then we go in?"_

It was a pretty good plan. I had a few refinements, but they were going to be a little pricey for resources.

"Good so far, but why do recon with us when we can requisition a theoretically infinite number of AGM-77s? Guided missiles are cheap, and it should be easy to tweak the stress sensors to pick up some suitably human parameter instead of stress fluxes in rock and ore deposits. Hide behind the shuttle, vector in a missile, we'll have the full maps—incidentally, get 'em—and cross-correlate lifesigns. All I want is a clear path to the hostages, the reactor, and the exit."

"_Yeah, but how are we going to secure any cross-tunnels if we don't do a full sweep of the mine?"_

I chuckled at that and felt her move against me.

"You're not gonna like it."

She snorted.

"_It's a suicide mission for the future of the human race. C'mon, what else could there be to object to?"_

"Oh, I don't know…" I teased her a little. "Nothing but…the mine launcher strapped right between those cute fins."

One hand left my shoulder. And promptly punched me lightly in it. It stung a little.

"_I hate that thing…can't maneuver for shit with it on. Heavy, ungainly, looks like ass, and we're back down to just the missiles I can cram on the two outboard racks, forget the upper two pods. I see what you're thinking, though. Go in hot, mine the cross tunnels with enough proximity bombs to practically cave in the tunnels on anything that sets them off, bring the shuttle through and get the hostages, then escort it out at speed. We go back in hot, straight to the reactor, blow it, get out, meet up with the hostages at the station and go right back down to the next one. Two things. No, wait, three."_

What could I say? We were a great team.

"I'd say 'hit me' but you just did…"

"_Yes yes, try to keep that sense of humor alive when the rest of us is free-floating clouds of vaguely pink metallic vapor. I want a crew chief to tweak the Vulcan—I've done some research and if I can put an interrupter circuit on the trigger I can make it chunk something into every barrel and activate all the power circuits at once as that first barrel comes back around. Sort of a shotgun effect for any bulkhead breaching that may be needed or if we run into something that needs to be knocked around and not woodpeckered to death. It'll slow the rate of fire to about a third. Trigger, spin-to-load delay, fire, spin-to-cool delay, spin-to-load delay, fire. If we have the time I'll have them set it up so you can select how many barrels fire at once, from one to all six. Also I want to make sure we can get smart mines as well as just the proximity ones. When we blow that reactor, if anything nasty starts chasing us I need more than a couple of dumb charges. I want them chased by plasma, if nothing else it gives us more time to get a little distance."_

It was an interesting idea. It'd make sure the barrels were cool enough to not detonate the ammo that went in next, if we were using ammo and not random chunks of ore by that point. And with the pod mounted on the centerline, even if the cannon was slewed off-center the differential thrust was something that could be easily compensated for with thrusters.

"Hell, I wish _I_ had the luxury of putting that little circuit together with you. It's a good idea. No guarantees on the smart mines, not from PTMC. Let's not plan on it, they may not have any smart missiles either speaking of plasma-chasing on impact. Tell you what, in case there's not plasma mines available how do you feel about hypervelocity missiles mounted backwards on the racks? I know they don't home but you can aim them with judicious thruster tweaking and I wouldn't even notice."

There was a brief silence then, I figured she was mentally going down the specs.

_"....Mercury missiles? You think they'd have that many message torpedoes handy? At that, though, it might be a lot sounder of a bet than counting on advanced gear, especially with some of these far-flung outposts. You do realize that the thruster aiming isn't going to be happening."_

Damn! She was right and it was fuzzy-headed thinking on my part. No air...no thrust. It wasn't like there was room for fuel tanks other than our secondary afterburner system, not with the assortment of thermionic converters that turned the heat of the reactor to power for the low-speed motors and the laser cannons. The temperature differential between the reactor and the cold of space, though, made for enough power for impulse...but how good was her control? In a dusty tunnel the field would be eroding pretty fast and the odds were that we'd be absorbing some hostile fire. That alone would degrade the shielding effect of the impulse field terrifyingly quickly, add to that the million tiny adjustments for controlled flight, but slowly enough we didn't smear all over a wall--impulse was never designed for slow-speed use. The first enterprising inventor to generate an impulse field and let it repel the ground FROM the ground died in a melty lump when the furious upward hurtling of the testbed abraded the field's 'magic dust' inside away against air molecules and friction did the rest. Too bad, it was still a good theoretical idea for launching.

"You know, this would have been a great thing to mention possibly before now. Can you do it with that degree of precision?"

She just scoffed at me.

_"After feeling me here against you, you really want to ask about the granularity of my control over the bubble? I'm reasonably sure I have it right. Worst-case I'll set it up so that it repels the ceiling, floor, and walls equally so we'll be pushed to the middle of the corridor regardless of its contour or twists and then we only have to worry about forwards or backwards distortions. Well, and enemy fire, but that's your job. I _am_ worried about Mercury, though. When I get the spare time and get a feel for how long these mines will take to clear, I'll find out where it'll be in its orbit. If we have to go in under direct sunlight, there might not be enough temperature differential to power the bubble. Worst case, we go in in a series of concentric orbits until a ballistic re-entry takes us unpowered into the mine entrance. Last-minute afterburners via some of the oxygen to slow descent, vector that for thrust until I can bring up the bubble. Getting out may also be interesting, I may need a shuttle tow. I'm hoping to be able to sneak in in the shuttle's shadow and keep a little power reserve back, but I've got contingencies. Of course if they put their mines in one of the polar craters it'll be a non-issue, or if it's local night. Just thought I'd let you know, dear."_

"You've got contingencies for everything I could think of, several I don't want to, and it's not at all surprising. Why don't we just get the emergency hydrogen afterburner tank refilled with deuterium slurry? You can do the electrical hydrogen/oxygen cracking on that and get a lot more thrust than straight water or oxygen alone would give if we need it. Other than that, I think we've got the best plan we can. Go ahead and make some requisitions for full maps. I want to know primary purpose of these three locations and exhaustive floorplans...and send word to the lunar processing station that we'll need between one and three shuttles prepped, as many message missiles as they can spare and coordinate for mines. Beyond that..."

I had to think for a moment. She wasn't the only one with contingency plans. Mostly I was thinking about the hostages, it was the part of the process that was somewhat new to us. It was pretty good odds that some of them would be a little worse for wear. We didn't have medical training, supplies, or spare time, so all we really needed was some way to subdue the ones who were inevitably going to panic and subdue them before they endangered the others or the entire shuttle or the entire mission.

"...beyond that, get them to put remote-controllable pacifier gas dispensers in the passenger compartment. I KNOW internal PTMC security will have those. What was your third thing?"

_"You got it. Anybody badly enough hurt that's not gonna wake up from the KO gas is too far gone for us to do anything for them if we need to deploy it anyway. I'll try to get variable nozzles for anything from 'hit the floor' to mellow out', just in case. Other than that, things are sent, I have acknowledgements, and it's about time we got underway. I have clearance for immediate dustoff. Plant is hot...say the word. Oh, and that third thing I wanted? Haven't decided yet--either a raise, a stiff drink, or a pony."_


	7. Barging Onward

Chapter 7: Barging Onward

"Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?

– Frank Scully

_I turned off the force projection then, not without a degree of faint regret. I knew my heat would stay on his skin for a few moments. It was only due to a little bit of energy bleed, but it was a nice reminder, one step closer toward reality. I knew reality would always be impossible to achieve but I had a goal to work towards--display over projection, both with matching textures and pliancy, for purposes both comforting and salacious. It wasn't going to come without a breakthrough but I nevertheless spent a lot of spare time on it. It seemed unlikely at this point either one of us would live to have much of it. If he had any idea how hard it was to hold my tongue up in that office, he didn't mention it. I wasn't going to. The entire thing made me more angry than I'd gotten in a long while. Systemic failures never 'just happened', there was always a root cause of some sort. I refused to believe that some kind of invading force had sailed in and set up shop on Charon and come insystem without any of the UEG forces noticing anything. For my money this was an inside job, somehow, but what? Who was behind it?_

_Jerome was handling the takeoff, safely cocooned now in the fluid-filled bolsters. I felt him nudge forwards at the throttle / weapons stick while trying to lift up on the control stick. It was the oddest sensation, felt like he was pulling the floor out from under my feet a little. My breath caught a little and my heart rate went up--or at least that's how I saw it. The other more rational part of me realized that my autonomous reflexes or what were left of them were controlling the reactor and the various ducting that corresponded loosely to muscles. My sense of body lifted on tiptoes and the thrusters spat fan air downwards until I was hovering a few feet upward. A little flick for nose-upwards--and I felt myself glancing upwards at what I could see of the hangar. When he goosed the throttle again I felt it like a gentle shove against my lower back. I leapt up then, floor falling away from my feet, and continued onward keeping my toes pointed the tiniest bit for ongoing thrust. The field barrier that kept air in was like diving into a cool pool on a hot day. It felt good, felt natural once you'd felt that temperature transition and fluid transition at the surface of the water envelop your skin. Out here in the blackness of space, I felt the chill as I drifted upward and outward on residual velocity. It was worth taking a moment to look around and see the stars._

_I never stopped to let myself think about the odd perception duality t these days. I still felt like myself. In my own vision I could look down and see...me, dressed in whatever I cared to imagine, and the ship both. Sometimes I'd be superimposed through it. I could look at, say, my feet and see an overlay of the thruster nozzles and engines on the actual image of my foot. Even though it wasn't there, I could still see it. Or if I concentrated, I could immerse myself in a sea of displays and readouts and schematics. My body vanished and I became one with the systems, falling into them. I tried not to do that unless it seemed needed, because I never knew if I could recover again. Sure, the Pyro's sensors picked up only reality, but by the time they got filtered through whatever neural networks and memory structures corresponded to my awareness they frequently introduced the sensory bias of me having a body. It was all very philosophically confusing. The boy had asked a few times what it was like and I still wasn't sure how to properly answer the question._

_I might tell him it was like normal vision if all you saw was black and white--when you added color, it was a whole other level of sensing and of detail, yet it overlaid perfectly with your normal vision. I could hear radio transmissions like he'd hear the radio playing in the background. You notice them, and if they say something that catches your attention you start actively paying attention to them. If they were encrypted, it was like hearing something in a language you didn't speak...again, until certain sounds or voice stresses made you listen and start figuring it out from context. I could feel radiation on my skin, corresponding roughly to where it was impinging on the hull. I could shoot laser bolts from my fingers--and I would fully admit loving every bit of that, to the point of muttering 'pew pew!" to myself a good portion of the time! I spat missiles, literally, and somehow I was able to shape the impulse field by merely contorting my body the appropriate way to maintain balance. It was simple, really, you just clasped your hands above your head and kept your legs tight together, twisting your torso to stay on track and pointing your toes for thrust. Like a never-ending dive from the high board at a pool, except the faster you went the thicker the air got and the more it started to hurt. And if you didn't flinch when your skin started getting raw, sooner or later you'd get stripped down to nothing at all and die. I had no desire to experience that a second time. When the ship was still was the only time I could concentrate and project my essential feeling of self and body into a force projection that wasn't centered around the hull. It was what let me hold the boy while he slept, kneel in his lap, forget myself and try to kiss him every so often. To taste the air, to run and jump with powerful enough legs that gravity was a defeatable enemy, I still would've traded it all to be alive and at his side._

_Space felt funny, to be perfectly honest. There was nothing to push off from like a planetary surface, there was nothing to push against and build speed like air. The only way I could move at all short of residual velocity was to start breathing deeply to get that fusion heart pounding. The hotter I got--and I felt the temperature differential very clearly--the colder space got and the more I started to get tingly and itchy to get moving. It took phenomenal amounts of power to generate the special particles that filled the bubble and made impulse possible, and I could feel the initial rush of them splashing over my skin. I swept my arms from my sides out and up, forming the bubble and clasped my hands above my head. In my own vision, I glanced down to my front and saw that I'd apparently chosen a _very_ skimpy bikini. No wonder I was that tingly. For grins and to make Jerome squirm just a little bit more, I echoed a view of myself to his heads-up display from the back, taut and flexing as I drifted. The usual HUD view hid the actual cockpit contours--one of these days I was going to get the cockpit windows replaced with solid armor--and this was no exception. It was a lie visually, but it didn't feel like a lie to me. And I could sense his heart rate go right back up from the calm state he'd been in before. I'd never had much of a presence by way of milkbags or chair cushions but the general consensus had been that I was lithe enough for it not to matter. I'd rather be a panther than a cow, that hadn't changed and may have been another reason I was so against the idea of becoming a destroyer if it were even possible....and the level of discomfort apparently developing was still flattering, dammit._

_How could you explain what it felt like to be able to dive into speeds that made interplanetary travel a thing of scant hours? It was exhilarating potential, it was the solar system in your grasp, it was like being buzzed on caffeine with the maniac edge taken off by a good stiff drink, that calm delight and 'anything is possible' energy surging through you. Add to that a skull full of pop rocks while having your feet rubbed and you'd about have it nailed. It didn't take any thought at all to see where the station was going to be and grinning like a maniac, I pointed my toes and WENT. A steady 3 Gs of acceleration wasn't too bad for the squishy dear in the center seat. _

_Of course, thanks to the bubble and the particles, the effective Gs were reduced by about a factor of three--a good thing, too. Say you were in a hurry to get to Pluto from Earth, for whatever stupid reason would make you want to go to Pluto, much less quickly. Sure, you could accelerate the whole way at whatever velocity you could endure and pass Pluto at a few percent of lightspeed, but if you wanted to actually stop there you'd have to deaccelerate at the midpoint and spend the rest of the way slowing down. The hurry-up-and-wait model in effect again. Let's say you needed to make it in a week. Three and a half days of being flattened and crushed by your own weight, followed by three and a half days of having the immutable laws of physics trying to shove your spine forward through your chest. (There was a good reason the slowboats and any long-distance craft had the occupants lying along the direction of thrust.) Without getting into the math, it turns out that you need to sustain about 9 Gs eyeballs-in then another 9 of eyeballs-out G for this to work, and you just can't DO that. It's hell on the spaceframe, it's fatal for humans. But about 3 sustained could be done if you didn't mind coming out of it as weak as a newborn kitten and with a whole-body bruise. As it happened, it felt like 3Gs inside the bubble. The scientists kept yapping about refining the impulse bubble to shield things better, making the particles more and more unpronouncable and difficult to generate, or applying shaped fields to structural members and the crew to promote structural integrity, but it was plenty hard for me to keep breathing hard enough to pull 9 real-world Gs forward and keep that bubble full of particles. If they got degraded, the Gs inside would start to increase, and that would eventually lead to chunky salsa which I absolutely hated anyway. _

_A ripple of the torso THIS way, then back to straight, and I dodged a dust cloud that was more like a murky patch in the water I swam through. It was hard going--if we were going to be doing all this interplanetary travel I was going to have Jerome clear out some of the equipment behind the seat that prevented it from reclining further. It already tilted back about thirty to forty-five depending on how much of a 'lead foot' I was being but if we lived to head out to do any serious work beyond the moon more would be needed. I'd be a quick slowboat at least and there was nothing back there that would be too difficult to remove. The ejector mechanism would have to go. Then again, he wouldn't stay alive long in an airless atmosphere full of tunnels and hostiles without me. And, honestly, I wouldn't do that again to my love. I'd died in front of him--while he was in that very seat--once already. While I still didn't know if I believe in life after death...present experiences aside...I was willing to claim enough selfishness that I didn't want to deal with a life without him and if we had to go out I was damn well determined it would be together. But ripping that out would have to wait. We'd stacked some surplus depleted uranium chunks, suitably plasticized, back there as well. I suppose the thought was that since there was an access panel through the footwell that would let you throw stuff down into the hopper for the mass driver, you could resupply in the middle of a fight if you ran out of ammo. It was a stupid idea--with that many rounds gone and lasers not usable, or missiles not usable, you'd be lucky to be alive much less to have leisure to fly off somewhere, hide, unbolster, pry off access panels down by your feet, and shift ingots of reallydamnheavy metal from Point A to Point B. Still, it was a catch-all for the little things that seemed to find their way into any fighting vehicle back there. The last time I'd looked back there I'd found several chocolate bars for energy, a box of bandages and disinfectant, a gold-plated hammer and a skin rag so old that it had to be from one of the original engineers who put this hull together. No accounting for taste, although young men in high heels and smoking cigarettes was sort of a specialized field of endeavor._

_This was the exact problem that had resulted in such a chilling of the fighting effort once the war took to space, I thought. "Fast" and "interplanetary" were just not in the same league, not even with the impulse bubble. The last time Jerome and I had been this strapped for operating capital I'd called in enough favors to get some belly bands, some explosive bolts, and a passenger crate made out of entirely transparent heat-resistant material. It was an absolute pig to lift and move, and the acceleration with it in felt like I had a sack of coal strapped to my gut, but enough people were willing to put down enough money each for a 'grand moon tour in a famous historical prototype' that we could keep the bills paid, the lights on (well, through me) and restock the missile pods. It was an all-day event at a lousy sustained g-and-a-half just to get out there, do one orbit, and land again. All day pain in the ass--and since they signed such stringent disclaimers, I was able to sell the gun-camera tapes of a few of them frenetically screwing in zero-g. It was good for about another thirty percent profit cleared and as a nice little side bonus the fuss they stirred up made it a pretty good bet that nobody would charter us for a passenger run again, which was kind of what the boy was hoping for in the first place. I aim to please._

_We'd hit turnover point in about a half hour and be at the moon processing station in an hour. If the robots didn't decide to zorch Earth first, of course, or the colonies around the mines. But you couldn't worry about things like that or you'd go absolutely crazy--you had to do what you could and let the rest of the universe tick as it would. And speaking of ticking away...I could see a distant speck now, rapidly coming closer. The nice thing about annihilating distance with raw power was that you didn't have to worry about things like crowded transfer orbits and instead everything was practically precomputed ballistics. I squinted hard, bringing the other ship into focus. A few seconds of approach more and I could just make out the registry. A squirt of that and the engine signatures to the PTMC databases I'd wholesale copied and I 'remembered' the ID of the ship as if I'd known it all along. She was the "Erg Gnomic", a PTMC barge out of Neptune carrying volatile exotic gases under pressures sufficient to keep them liquid. Must've left a long time before the incident, Neptune was several days away even at our ruinous thrust. They were puttering along and under a measly one-bubble g of deacceleration, nothing respectable. From the database came the crystalline nugget of artificial memories--now that I was curious--that their standard procedure was to run up 3 real Gs for not longer than a few hours and coast the rest of the way before a late and gentle reversal. Seems the power plant wasn't up to the demands of sustained acceleration AND maintaining cargo bay pressure cryonics. It was interesting to know but ultimately useless because that wasn't why I wanted to find out a little bit about them._

_"Hey you, you still with me?"_

_Jerome sounded like absolute shit as he replied. I could sense via telemetry that he was under a fair amount of stress but nevertheless holding up well. Historical records were nice to have of past telemetry under similar pressures._

"I'm here...I think I liked you sitting on me a lot more than I like two extra mes sitting on me. What's on your mind?"

_"C'mon, you know you've always wanted to have your very own clone orgy..." I tossed off, splitting my projection on his HUD into three little cartoon versions of me, doing a dance routine for a step or two._

"Yeah, but not with me. Too much hair, too much cock. ...What's on your mind?"

_"Hah. Like I ever objected. I got a Neptunian gas barge, we're gonna blow by them pretty close. Like intercept-pass close, at a closing speed of you-don't-wanna-know. Probably close enough to set off proximity alerts over there. Rattle their cage or be polite?"_

_I threw up the image of the barge and relevant data on his HUD. Careted the actual position, still invisible to the naked eye, and wireframed it off to the side. If it were up to me I'd go past squawking our military ident loud enough to blow their radio speakers and warning them not to change course, let them think what they would. Things would get abruptly worse, after all, given that they wouldn't be taking the barge back any time soon. Might as well give them something to speculate about. Then again, I always was a touch theatrical. I could see Jerome studying the readout, and I added the little acceleration snippet to it. His eyebrow lifted faintly. I couldn't imagine any use he'd have for the factoid either but he stashed it away somewhere in that kitty brain of his and shrugged._

"Blow their doors off. We're priority traffic anyway and I may as well get a start on destroying PTMC property in a small way via a couple pairs of underwear over there. Don't hot-dog it and deliberately cut closer, but I don't really see the point in moving if nobody informed us of incoming traffic along this vector. Hey, and echo their cockpit channel to me, I want to see if they find any clever new ways to insult us."

_My kind of man. With an internal grin from ear to ear, I flicked on the message laser and took aim. "Pew pew pew!" I whispered to myself, getting it lined up -- with a little bit of pride -- directly dead center on their cockpit window. And then turned the volume to the metaphorical eleven. Our transponder bellowed out our military clearance and mercenary registration and I heterodyned my own 'scary AI' voice giving our PTMC ultra-priority credentials, alternating with a warning to maintain course precisely and acknowledge immediately. broadcasting our military-mercenary transponder ID alternating with the shiny new PTMC ultra-priority clearance and a warning to maintain course. Just to cause a little further panic, I threw in a couple phrases about immediate acknowledgement required. Let them stew a little over there! I patched the return channel through to the cockpit and concentrated on keeping my eyes on the ship and my pose steady. There was silence for a long moment, and I imagined what must be going on over there. They were IN the cockpit, they had to be, they were on their approach to Shiva. Unless they were being a little lazy about it and kicking back with a beer or each other or whatever amused them--everything that was that long-haul was pretty extensively automated. PTMC had a real hard-on for automation. It was why we were having a reasonably shitty start to our week. Finally by the time the ship was just barely visible to the naked eye as a dot moving against the stars, a panicky transmission came bouncing back from their own beam. It was hard to punch a comm laser through impulse bubbles but that was what computers were for. We were closing damn fast, faster every second._

"Uh, this is Wilson Gund and Qing Wei of PTMC barge Erg Gnomic acknowledging _all_ transmissions from II-JNY-02....we are maintaining course as ordered...we haven't done anything wrong, have we? Don't shoot!"

_After the terrified tenor there was a brief pause during which I could distinctly hear the sound of frantic whispering and what sounded like the start of a fistfight before a different voice came on, soprano and still sounding scared as hell. _

"This is Qing Wei, Erg Gnomic. II-JNY-02, please confirm if possible that intended interception is numbers nine world-gee proximity pass. Be advised at this time that volatile cargo may detonate at impingement of impulse wake unless applicable regulations regarding safe distances are observed."

_Well shit._

_I could hear Jerome snickering in the background, but all I could see was our velocity vectors extending in different directions and the distance whirling down. There wasn't enough time to verify that statement--and why the hell hadn't hangar control told us about incoming traffic along our stated flight plan?!--and I didn't have a lot of time for much of anything except shunting fluid to the bolsters, inflating them to painful pressure on poor Jerome._

_"Shut up, hang on."_

_I LEANED hard then away from the onrushing ship, bowing my body like a gymnast. I could feel my joints and muscles cracking and stretching, straining...it wasn't like diving into water now, it was like doing a bellyflop off the high dive but it went on and on for what seemed like an eternity, the structural stress indicators in the red and flashing angrily at me in the corner of my vision, itself redding out..._

_And then we were past, the differential thrust enough for just that second to catapult us onto a vector that took us past the safe radius for wake turbulence. If I'd waited any longer, the required acceleration would've killed us both. As it was I reviewed the logs. That little move had pulled an astounding twenty seven Gs, only a brutal and brief nine inside the bubble. Jerome groaned weakly as I deflated the bolsters back to normal levels of pressure. He'd be fine. A little sore, but then again so was I. No lasting damage that a hypersonic skip through atmosphere wouldn't heat up and return to tolerances._

_"II-JNY-02 to __Erg Gnomic__, non-proximity pass executed. Just passing through. Be advised that your flight plan and wake requirements are not on file with Shiva Hangar Control. Suggest this be corrected immediately before next ultra-priority ship not capable of radical evasion drops a missile in your flight path despite the paperwork involved."_

_Swear to the imaginary gods I would've done it, too, if it wouldn't have been more dangerous to deal with debris at that closing speed. A record of the exchange got tightbeamed back to Shiva, as long as I was pointing the message laser astern. I wouldn't say I was happy about any of it._

"Erg Gnomic acknowledges, II-JNY-02. Flight plans transmitted to intermediate processing stations during controlled space transits but all confirmations...scattered, delayed, or improperly filed. Query any known PTMC communication issues?"

"I should bloody well think so..."

_Jerome muttered to himself and of course me. I hadn't bothered to patch him into the channel because he hadn't said anything to them._

"I'd bet the intermediates lost contact with their mines too, Shiva's told them to stay put no matter what and wait for assistance and it sounds like cross-station commo is down or going down too. Fantastic. They're going to be as paranoid as bald porcupines. This just keeps getting easier."

_"...Unable to answer, __Erg Gnomic__, this craft engaged for PTMC trouble shooting only."_

_Jerome snorted in amusement at the way I put that little pause in. I ignored him for a moment longer._

_"Further advise that speculation about internal PTMC affairs be confined to inquiries escalated through established management structure. __Erg Gnomic__ does not have need-to-know on these matters or want-to-know. II-JNY-02 out."_

_I stepped on them pretty hard, yes, but they'd earned it. That was one nosy chick and I decided on reflection that I preferred the 'get out of the way' willingness of the male crewmember._

"Uh, confirmed on all counts, II-JNY-02. ...Thank you for implementing a non-proximity pass instead of, er, ordinance interdiction. Good luck and, and good hunting. Erg Gnomic out."

_Speaking of Wilson. Damn kids. Get off my projected lawn. I could see Jerome shaking his head at me carefully._

"Must everything we do be fraught with peril?"

_I put my hands on my hips on my projection for him, turning off the message laser and satisfied to put the barge behind me, so to speak. A bit of body english, a slight different point to the fingers, and the field subtly altered. We'd be back on course soon enough, the corrected path would only add a minute or so cumulatively._

_"You know it's just because I'm trying to keep your short attention span happy, right? I mean, we've still got the better part of an hour to get there. I don't know how you're going to amuse yourself."_

_He chuckled dryly at that. We'd resorted to things like I Spy or poking fun at bad movies before to relieve some of the interplanetary monotony--but we didn't do high-accel long-distance runs like that very often. Just because you could didn't always mean it was a good idea._

"I think I'm going to cheat, actually, and catnap. It's been a hell of a morning and I've taken some good knocking about already. I may not get much of a chance to sleep in the next few weeks, after all. And sustained gravities really take it out of you."

_It was a good plan. There wasn't really any such thing as too much sleep in this line of work, and exhaustion was a good way to make sure that the scenes and faces of your past didn't bother you too much._

_"I'll try to hold course changes down to only minor spaceframe deformation, then. Sleep while you can, love."_

_I wasn't paying much attention to my course. The automatics--call them my habits--took over well enough for that. I just had to keep deep breathing to keep things well-powered. Mostly I watched him as he drifted off to sleep. With the bolsters holding him securely in place and the bubble up, I couldn't touch him even if I wanted to. Under less acceleration, I could've inflated them strategically, worked with ripple patterns, given him the feel of hands on his shoulders or rubbing his neck or back, but under this kind of steady pressure it would be more agonizing than welcome. I had something akin to sleep myself, where I could effectively close my eyes and let the rest of my senses take over. When you're lying in a silent room, resting, you nevertheless feel vibrations of footsteps, hear the floor creaking or traffic outside. Every sense becomes that much more acute and for those who live in enough violence to be able to instantly discern when one of those stimuli is out of place for the background, you don't need to be paying attention for your attention to be caught. It was like that, and with the silly thought that maybe we'd see each other in our dreams, that I set the autopilot to pull a proper turnover at the halfway point and prod me when we got within docking range of the lunar processing station. We already had blanket clearance--not much was getting up there or going back down, not now--and there was nothing to do but watch his sleeping face and let myself drift into blackness as well. To sleep, perchance not to remember..._


	8. Official Stationary

Chapter 8: Official Stationary

"Attacking is the only secret.

Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes,

dare it again, and it will succumb."

– William Makepeace Thackeray

_----discontinuity----_

_There were two kinds of waking up. The good kind--where you drifted slowly to awareness, safe and warm and not rushed, next to somebody you cared deeply about and conscious of a deep feeling of contentment and relaxation. Like slowly surfacing in a bath of warm syrup, stretching languidly and prolonging the transition as might an indolent housecat. The other kind was a lot more violent and a lot less gentle, more like being woken up by a bugle and a firehose or the sudden knowledge that something was very wrong either with your surroundings or you. I got the latter, snapping back into full and icy clarity with a wrenching lurch. I looked all around myself in paranoid alertness, fingers curled to unleash a devastating barrage on whatever was close by and inimical, checked Jerome's telemetry and the course--we were drifting toward the open docking bay of the processing station at a few meters per second, bubble down and the plant back to idle. The wall of the blocky station loomed large, looking more like a maze of pipework than a solid structure, as we got closer. The docking bay was one of the few solid structures attached to the framework of girders and mysterious pipes and even the massive mass driver that took up an entire arm of the giant four-armed structure read as idle and unpowered. There was nothing that looked like a threat, although the residental arm looked twisted and somewhat melted. A few little PTMC security shuttles puffed propellant clouds into the inky blackness as they altered course in formation and headed around for another orbit of the station's perimeter, but they hadn't even hailed us or scanned us beyond a cursory initial sniff. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what had jolted me up to speed so quickly. Maybe, I thought darkly to myself, I was developing a healthy phobia of Post-Terran facilities. A hell of time to get one. There was a crackle of static over the docking frequency, then I heard the startled voice of the hangar control supervisor._

"II-JNY-02, you are priority for immediate docking at your convienence. All other traffic is holding. Show you as entering air barrier in numbers three zero seconds. Requested adminstrative liason is standing by on bay floor."

_30 seconds out? I did a quick review of the logs. The autopilot had done precisely what I did on the way out--flipped the field deformation 180 degrees at the course midpoint and run three point mumble Gs of deaccel all the way in until we'd ended with the same toward-station residual velocity we had when I'd sprung out of Shiva before kicking in the bubble. It was a nice piece of work, especially so for an automatic setup, but I guess it was working with my reflexes. Hard to really say. Nevertheless, we'd held an alarming decel until more than close enough to make the station occupants wonder if we'd finish braking in time. Jerome would have to apologize, if he felt sorry, which he wasn't likely to. From the sounds of it he felt asleep, and noisily so although he'd only started to saw logs once we dropped back down to zero-gee drifting. _

_"II-JNY-02 confirms, projected touchdown just inside field in numbers four five seconds. Out."_

_Still....adminstrative liason? I had made it very clear in my transmission that we needed somebody in charge of flight operations to ensure the missiles / mines, shuttle, and minor modifications. Not an admin weenie. If the station manager had pulled rank to insert themselves in the middle of a palaver, I was going to have to let Jerome be upset and verging on violence...although it was a relaxing outlet for emotion, I was of necessity limited in my ability to indulge. People in pressurized high-oxygen-content atmospheres never liked to hear "But I only burned a little hole" as a justification._

_Nevertheless, the automatic program had mirrored the outward trajectory so perfectly that now we were pointing inward and about to cross the barrier. Backward thrust wasn't exactly my strong point but nevertheless I flipped the angle on the fan blades, bringing them back up into what would be the airstream, and ran the motors up. The descent angle was going to have us within a few feet of the floor anyway so once they bit they'd retard enough forward progress for us to just drop the last foot or so. As a side bonus, it'd probably wake up the sleepyhead. A simple solution to a complex problem. Broaching the barrier once again sent a chill bone-deep through me, then a flash of painful heat like frostbite. The tingles and feeling of uncomfortable hotness from just cold air would fade eventually as the hull warmed back up, cooling the air that flowed over it in return for heat and being heated from within to a greater degree by the reactor. It was a little bumpy adjustment and I wiggled a little but managed to drop the last foot or so to land on tippytoes before going flatfooted again. The hull was steady on landing skids and I shut down everything but minimal reactor power. I wanted the hull to stay as cold as possible--it would be a little hard on Jerome to clamber down on something that was already accumulating a thick layer of frost but the greater the temperature differential between exotic liquid metals keeping the heat exchangers and thermionics happy and the outside, the more juice would be available at a moment's notice. Besides, his jumpsuit was insulated for emergency space survival, if he kept his gloves and boots on he'd make it down just fine._

_"Wake up, sleepyhead, we're at Grandma's."_

_Jerome groaned and tried to wriggle around. I obligingly deflated the bolsters and popped the canopy. He stretched long and luxuriously, apparently savoring being able to move again and wincing at the bruising._

"This is going to be entirely too fun if we have to keep doing interplanetary runs. Ugh...which grandma? Housecat or possibly German Socialist scientist on Mom's side or Emmaline on Dad's?"

_The Corbells went back a long strange way. There was a streak of xenophile a country mile wide in them and their relationships always had a touch of the unconventional , myself being no exception. If something involved trouble and technology it was a pretty good bet that somewhere at the heart of it you'd find a well-pleased Corbell. Since the early 1900s they'd been causing havoc, usually involved with machinery in a fashion that made the very idea of peace seem completely anathema to them. From volunteering to fly in World War 1 before the USA officially entered it to offshore rum-running to running pirate radio stations to bomber navigation to commanding deep-space cruisers to smashing apart asteroids to providing air support to the highest bidder, Corbells found ways to get into more trouble than you'd think humanly possible. Then again, the line had survived this long so there was a strong argument that they also had the ability to extricate themselves. I just hoped that this wouldn't be the end of the line for the family, DNA on file notwithstanding. It wasn't like the boy was going to be producing any heirs with ME, which was actually probably for the best thanks to some decidedly strange genetics of my own._

_"Well, from what I can see, the lady in the slightly-too-small three piece pinstriped number over there looks more like a scientist type than either a hairball or a wrench jockey, but there's a lot of dirt under her fingernails that might be deceptive."_

_High resolution optics came in handy now and again. For the life of me I couldn't put a name to her, though, she wasn't wearing a nametag. Sure, I could zoom in and see her irises close enough to bounce that off the HR database, or enhance her fingerprints but why bother? Only a complete idiot would try to start trouble under my guns in an all-too-fragile air-filled box. She was squinting at the ship pretty intently, and finally shrugged and started walking this way. Guess we'd dropped a lot closer to the exit than the usual run, not that there was anything else docked-- warnings about traffic notwithstanding._

_"Either way you're gonna have a peeping Tommi any moment now unless you get out."_

_I shut off the projection to his helmet and turned off the O2 pressure feed to it to get the point across. I didn't like intruders. With a sigh, he pulled the helmet off, the fitting from the seat's oxygen connection hissing a bit as it disconnected, and swung himself down quickly over the iced-over steps. Cold air blew off the hull and ruffled his hair slightly as he extended his gloved hand courteously to the woman. I'd seen hydraulic presses that were built to lesser standards of durability. She was big, easily a foot over his head, and with shoulders flat and wide, and as she put out a hand in return none of her arm moved like fat. They gripped wrists and _pulled_, leaning backwards simultaneously before letting go and parting again. It was a lunar greeting, Jerome had told me once. A combination of the old-fashioned handshake and also a demonstration of sufficient strength to pull your conversational partner to safety if it became needed. I thought it was silly, but my opinion didn't really matter against a long tradition of the colonists and where Jerome was born. She finally spoke, a grudging look of respect in her eyes. She had a weight advantage, but I knew better than to underestimate the forearm and leg strength of somebody who flies at sustained Gs like we do._

"You must be Mr. Corbell, or should I call you MD 1032? Your secretary lasered ahead and of course we got your clearances then and now. I'm Tawny Bovain, acting station manager."

_Just great, another suit. Not a bad contralto voice, either. Odd, the local computers listed her as..._

"But until two days ago I was chief of flight operations. We just haven't had any flight operations since then, everything's grounded."

_Yeah, that. There were also a lot of missing names in the station active roster compared to those of a couple days ago._

"Nice to meet you, Tawny. I'm afraid we're a little pressed for time here, if you don't mind we'll save the top-level discussions until we make it back here. For now, would you mind putting on your flight ops hat and just calling me Jerome?"

_Jerome could be so charming and cute when he wanted to be. He was positively twinkling, giving up the 'small and deadly' angle in favor of the 'cute little catboy on a mission' mask. It seemed to be working, given that predatory smile starting to spread across Tawny's face. Bah, it sounded like a stripper name anyway, but it wasn't my place to nitpick how he got the job done. Hey, she was the one with the green eyes now, but I'd had them in life. _

"You got it, Jerome, and I've been waiting for somebody to ask that for two days now."

_She was stripping! ...No, she was taking off her suit coat and tie. No, she WAS stripping, unbuttoning the shirt and everything! I caught Jerome's look of horrified surprise, shot back over his shoulder at me, and projected my own face in much the same expression for just enough long enough for him to see. But then the jumpsuit was revealed underneath, the chevrons of seniority obvious. She tossed the coat and tie and shirt carelessly aside, letting them drape across an ore assayer probe that looked the worse for wear._

"Don't mind the show...it's not my suit and the owner won't be wanting it back any time soon. So you need a shuttle prepped, a mine launcher, a few missiles, and a work crew for that cute little Pyro, eh?"

_Ugh, she didn't have to do that. In the jumpsuit she cut an impressively full figure as well, much less hidden. I could see where this was going. I could see where he'd be going. I wanted him to be happy and didn't much care where he went because I knew he'd always be home, but I knew he was a lot more impressed with competence than with gigantic...bulwarks and this was a hell of a way to make an impression. Well, as long as she knew her job, I was willing to forgive it._

"I can't say as I've had that kind of effect at a first meeting before..."

_He laughed, and so did she. If you knew him like I did, you could hear that little sardonic undertone in his voice. Almost imperceptibly faint, but nevertheless she hadn't scored any points with him. Possibly even had gone into the negatives. Still, whatever it took to get the job done._

"...but that's correct. About 50-person capacity if they're crammed in, slaved navigation and locked communications, pacifier gas dispensers. Ideally a flare / countermeasure capacity. No wider than...(Cutie, take a peek at those maps. Are we narrow enough to squeeze through?)"

_I already had, and we were. Some of the tunnels would be cutting it frighteningly close, though. There'd be inches at best to spare between sheer rock walls and the armor over the outboard wingtips and laser muzzles...and I dreaded to think how I was going to build the bubble. The only thing that came to mind, short of a skin-tight field which posed a number of problems in itself--like where the hell did you get enough particles for a propulsive effect jammed in there?--was possibly getting strange and setting up a self-contained bubble below the hull that didn't actually enclose it. It would be possible to deform it and have it apply a tiny bit of thrust upwards, which would transfer the thrust to the power plant, itself structurally part of the hull. Not a great solution, but we'd deal with it when we got there. I muttered in his ear quietly._

_"Red cunt-hair's clearance. It may be bad. You stay away from squeezing in her tunnels until we get done with this or you get some better taste."_

"...no wider than, uh, her wingtips. Preferably narrower."

_To his credit, he choked back a snort of laughter, subvocalizing back._

"(You should know I don't make a habit of bedding women I can't beat in a _fair_ fight.)"

_My turn to snicker to myself. Our first time enjoying each other all those years ago at the Institute had been the direct result of a fair fight in which I fought most unfairly and won. Later, in a private rematch, I'd discovered he could fight just as unfairly and when all was said and done we were both the victors. I couldn't see him surviving much of a tumble with Miss Bovain, though._

"Can't imagine why not..but that's sure a big set of requirements you're cramming into one request. I could get an admin shuttle refitted with gas and countermeasures, but it'd take time that you might not have. Several hours to do the job right and that's with all my crews working on it. Would a security boat work better? They're designed to be tricky to see coming, they handle nicely, set up to pacify stressed passengers..."

_The flirting was outrageous. And also really bad. Jerome had a look on his face that was half-pained, half thoughtful, and while he took a few seconds to think so did I. Security craft looked good on paper and I didn't mind admitting it. They had warhead launchers, too, so in case of difficulty we could supplement our firepower a little. I immediately began modifying the plan. We'd go in under 'protective custody' from the security shuttle, stage a breakaway...it was doable but would have to be done even quicker. If PTMC intel was right and the mines didn't talk to each other, we might get away with it. One mine, one science outpost, one military research facility...one less mine now, along with Lunar Colony 3, or Elsthree as it was recorded. I grunted assent._

_"(And ask her what the hell happened to this place. Computers are lobotomized, half the crew manifest is scrambled and the other half marked as KIA, and this is just the public stuff--and on my way in it looks like the station itself got hit pretty hard.)"_

"You make a pretty compelling package of suggestions, ma'am. Sounds like that'll be the best way to proceed. I'd rather have one that's already full and hot to trot, as it were. Now, what about the things that shoot off?"

_He grinned at her, baring those cute little fangs for a moment. I could see Tawny start to blush. Really, she ought to know--never try to out-innuendo a pilot. Charm and consideration took you so much further than boilerplate. Probably as far as her bedroom, or the nearest doorframe if she was thinking what I was thinking she was predictably, dully, thinking. _

"Er, well, Jerome, there's a couple warheads you might want to take a look at. I probably shouldn't be telling you this but we wound up resupplying a UEG light destroyer a few months back, strictly unofficially. They needed a lot of concussion missiles and apparently had to get rid of some nonstandard homers. So there were a few unauthorized trades on the side for any number of small high-value items from our personnel and in exchange we got the homing missiles. I hear the chief of supply is trying to get rid of them, something about serial number mismatch for the physical inventory..."

_Bloody amateur. They needed concussion missiles because some enterprising supply wog had called them 'used for target practice' and probably wangled some equipment upgrades for the destroyer's systems in return for trading away perfectly good missiles. And what better way to resupply than by converting a little unauthorized hard currency into hardware via PTMC before stopping back at Earth's military supply depot? Kept the books straight, gave everybody something to do with their various alcohols, personal favors, and little contraband items, and if Tawny was smart she'd be putting forward the offer a lot more subtlety than this. None of it would be on the books, but at the end of the day everybody would be a little happier and have things they wanted a little more. Jerome smiled, taking a step forward and putting an arm over Tawny's shoulders, turning her away by suggestion from my hull and walking a few steps toward the back of the hangar with her in tow._

"I can see how that would be a problem--as it happens, Tawny, not only do I hear that Elsie Seven has an excellent pre-lizard Japanese eatery, but I also have several numbers-matching concussion missiles I purchased from the military and a lot of, shall we say, data of more entertainment value than operational value, that I've been looking to offload. Perhaps I should have a chat with your supply officer and we can coordinate when I get back, if they can be persuaded to liberate the missiles for this mission..."

_He never _had _understood grand strategy, despite all the lessons that the Institute instructors had tried to cram into that stubborn head, despite my fruitless late-night attempts to reenact famous historical battles with bits of candy on the sheets. Small-unit tactics, now, he'd excelled at that, although small unit wasn't a phrase I'd found much cause to use around him. I knew the routine by heart now and wasn't paying much attention any more, instead focusing We'd have those missiles before we touched off, a nice little trade that would cost nothing more than a gift certificate to the teppanyaki place over at Lunar Colony 7 where he'd been born and a data dump of some of the more choice entertainment files I'd collected for just such purposes. Let Tawny think he'd stick around and possibly bed her...what we knew and she wouldn't was that we had a tight schedule to keep. One outpost, one military-leased facility, then we were outbound again. No time for tomcat foolery. I devoted my attention to scanning the outbound comm traffic bands, trying to overhear anything interesting, wondering if I should pick one of the security shuttles at random to have come in for reassignment and slug it with Tawny's codes while she was distracted. It shouldn't take long for him to negotiate a settlement. When she broke away a few scant moments later, she was blushing rather noticably as she tapped prefix codes into a communication panel on a nearby support strut._

"Oh, Jerome, you're impossible! I'll get this taken care of, get you all loaded up and turned around in no time flat...and if there's anything else you want, just talk to me and I'll make sure to take care of you."

_I'll just bet you would. I made note of her command codes--and now I had a copy, just in case--and proceeded to not pay a lot of attention to anything she said, not when I could monitor the two-way channel to the lead shuttle just as easily._

"Now, Miss Bovain, I think you'll find me quite easy to please, especially when you say things like that..."

_He winked, tossed her a casual salute, and headed back my way at a slow amble._

_"You're stringing that poor woman along and we both know it." _

_I told him wearily. Whoever she was talking to was yelling loudly enough to clip the incoming waveform and it was a little hard to process. Something about needing further vigilance, ongoing security emergency, prevent further deaths, blah blah blah. Tawny was pulling rank but it didn't sound like she had the touch needed to manage people without resorting to naked authority--so to speak. Whoever it was tried to override the transmission and cut it from his end. I reached out and put my hand over the board in that distant ship, or at least that's what it felt like, and used Tawny's own codes to lock it to his input until she hung up first on her end._

"(In my defense, I got us all the missiles she had, and it's a good place even if she does go alone. Anyway, the chef's been looking for a lady like her since I was a kid. Except for the ears, he kinda looks like an Oriental sumo version of me except going a lot more grey. Very distinguished guy. Pop the damn panel off, let me see if there's space to wire things in. If it's armament beyond missiles I'd rather be the single point of failure for maintenance.)"

_"(So you're trying to set her up with some old slab of muscle who can cook? Honestly, you're such a softy. Why?)"_

_I undid a button on my uniform, the access panel on the chin turret correspondingly disengaging its latch and falling open. Cold air still poured off the hull and it was with a grimace Jerome stuck his gloved hands in, feeling for the circuitry._

_"There's a bypass switch to engage multibarrel mode for bench testing, it's just a control input from L-45 to the purple optical transceiver processing the firing signal. If you can get a relay tapped into the turret arming feed and tying L-45 to the backup gunnery deflection output, I should be able to trigger however many barrels you'd like. We'll have to work out how you want to tell me."_

"(Well, why not? I'm not going to follow through on anything I implied, this is second best but will probably work out better for her in the long run. Costs me little enough, preserves goodwill, and you have to admit this is going to be a lot more efficient, albeit slightly painfully awkward, than ramming administrative directives down throats. Damn but it's cramped in here!)"

_That or it was hard to work with gloves on. Probably both. There was a little work light in there--there was a work light everywhere, easy when power was in overabundance--but that didn't give more finger room. It was the strangest feeling, having him working on me like this. Like having somebody gently probing at a deep open wound in your hand, debriding it and putting tiny little stitches in. It wasn't really pain, but it was unique. Tawny had cut the channel by now and was calling a work crew in, looking somewhat pissed off and occasionally glancing toward the backside of the oblivious Jerome, muttering to himself while hands-deep in my innards. With any luck she'd not come over here and bother us too much--I had the spare parts, don't know why I hadn't gotten around to doing this before, but it was still delicate work._

_Across the hangar the entrance doors opened and a bunch of jumpsuited workers came shuffling our way, tools in hand and chatting amongst themselves. A little more fire found its way into their steps when they saw the squat menace of the hull perched on their bay floor and they began to move with more purpose. I was used to the reaction, but honestly more interested in the cargo elevator I could sense coming down from the secure storage. An armed PTMC security guard stood next to a large cart that held an entire securely stacked pyramid of shiny new homing missiles--and next to it, a flatbed of message torpedos with yet another armed guard. Those were slimmer, needing no warhead. All you had to do was keep their supercapacitors charged with enough raw grunt to power a impulse field for a second or so. It didn't last long but the acceleration was enough for long enough to make them hit something at damn near escape velocity. Er, carry a message capsule faster than a manned courier could and much more securely than encrypted transmission, if not quite as fast. Of COURSE nobody would think of using them as weapons. No, when railguns were portable and pretty much over-the-horizon killers, there sure wasn't a use for a hypervelocity missile to skewer something from half the planet away if you calculated the ballistics right. Railguns and big mass drivers were always a problem, but fortunately they required a fair bit of energy to power and short of one-shot battery-fired traps you could sense them from miles away. Message torpedoes were our long range option, really, with the homers and concussions more for medium-range engagements and the lasers and vulcan for short-range tangles. It was hard for a missile to survive long enough to get to its target these days between countermeasures and directed energy interceptions, so the knife fights happened a lot more often than you'd really expect. I wanted every single missile on those carts in me so bad I could taste it. Ignoring the tingle of Jerome clipping the relay into place and testing the connections, I activated the actuators that slid away the covers on my missile pods. The foreman of the crew came over, clearing his throat. Jerome backed out, looking annoyed for a moment._

"You must be MD-1032, Mr Corbell--nice Pyro, I used to work for a station that kept a couple GLs around. Quentin Watson, and Miss Bovain says you need some exploding hardware post-haste."

_Jerome nodded and carefully pulled off his glove, holding the cold ceramic finger pads away from his body with his other hand, extending his hand to shake._

"Make that Jerome, Quentin, and we can talk shop if we have the time."

_They shook hands, exchanging chilly fingers for a side of grease, and as the guards carefully drove the carts across the hangar I got distracted by a shuttle coming in hot. The PTMC security shuttles weren't pretty, basically bricks with vestigal wings, doing most of their work under the assumption that fuel was plentiful and they'd be short-range enough to have access to it. There was a top turret and a belly turret, both with one stubby laser cannon protruding from them. If my schematics were correct, the turrets were elevated enough--almost out to the wings--to give a pretty fair field of fire with a natural equatorial blind spot, but there was an explosively-actuated band of shrapnel as active armor installed along that belt anyway. They weren't any good for serious scrimmages but for suppressing people rioting with small arms for fair working conditions, they'd historically done reasonably well. _

_It only by a last-minute flare didn't hit the far wall but nevertheless slammed down hard--I couldn't tell if it was a hot-shot landing or failed equipment or pilot negligence, it was that bad--and before the belly ramp had even extended fully a very short and very dark woman came marching down it, looking left and right. She spotted Tawny and stalked over toward her, ripping off her helmet and hurling it at the larger woman furiously before starting in on a high-volume tirade. Jerome paused in the middle of telling Quentin what he wanted in which pods and glanced over curiously. It wasn't at all hard to hear her, and Quentin shuffled slightly behind one of my wingtips, muttering something about the hamster being on the warpath again. Tawny stepped aside, the helmet sailing on past before landing with a crunch on the concrete flooring and rolling somewhere hidden._

"...and I've told you a thousand times that we need to be VIGILANT out there, especially now that nobody is answering our communications and we're down so many good people! For all we know the entire solar system is at war again and the last thing you should be doing is pulling me off a security detail so you can give my shuttle to some puffed-up Very Immense Prick from headquarters for some fucking mysterious joyride! The only way this station is going to be protected is if you go back to your melted quarters and jam your grandiose ass into a hull breach, then we could at least pressurize PART of the goddamn arm..."

_I liked her already._


	9. Ore, Else Watt?

Chapter 9: Ore, Else Watt?

"The best way out is always through."

– Robert Frost

I'd already dismissed Tawny from my mind, honestly, once I'd turned my back on her. While she might be an entertaining climb, she outmuscled me considerably and only a fool started a fight or a bedding when they'd be at that much of a disadvantage. This mission aside. Nor was I especially interested in talking with Quentin about the GX versus GL. I'd had that discussion a million times before but it was something I could do with half my brain tied behind my back and I was so busy sketching out what missiles I wanted where, hands waving in the air descriptively, that I honestly didn't notice the shuttle coming down until it bounced off the concrete with a shower of sparks. If it was important Jenny would clue me in, and PTMC had their share of lousy pilots and equipment failures just like anywhere else. Quentin seemed paralyzed, though, watching who was coming out of it. Even I was a foot taller than her and that was saying something.

"Oh, fantastic, the hamster's on the warpath. Buddy, you wanna not be looking that way, trust me here."

Suiting action to words, he and the work crew instantly found that they were all needed to help lift down the missiles from Jenny's pods that she was helpfully spitting partially out with the little launching inductor motors. Even the guards were goosing the motors on their missile carts a little higher. If that was the shuttle that Tawny had just commandeered, the pilot sure seemed pissed. I could understand the feeling, but shrugged. Best not to get into it. I had my head and arms back inside the cavity, paying more attention to the schematics I could half-visualize and the readouts on the built-in diagnostics, until I started hearing some of the lady's invective. That wasn't usually the kind of vehemence you got from a security drone. They tended to be the sorts to be unnaturally compliant with orders from designated superiors and supreme dicks to anybody who didn't treat them like tiny gods, not dicks to their superiors. 'Very Immense Prick', eh? I'd have to remember that one. Unseen, I grinned. Although my ears were more or less shrouded by the confines of the turret access panel, I could still hear Tawny's reply, half via acutely sensitive hearing and half via Jenny's helpful feed. I got the sense the blue lady was just as amused as I was, via some uncanny sort of emotional echo. I'd always chalked it up to pheromones of some sort, or lately strange field resonances, but I was beginning to wonder.

"Now listen, Hannah, ignoring your insubordination and grossly inappropriate professional conduct FOR NOW..."

Tawny's bellow was something I wouldn't've wanted to be on the bad side of. Jenny murmured something appreciative in my ears and I found I had to agree. The sheer volume and tonality could have made a drill sergeant proud.

"...our very important _guest_ is working on a blank administrative check, pursuant to orders that I sure as hell don't have access to read...and he's our closest thing to information on what the fuck is really going on that we've had for two days!"

Hannah the hamster, eh? Well, everybody had their call sign or nickname, and some of them were less than flattering. Once you got tagged, that was it for you. Still, hamsters would fight each other to the death, some breeds, and I wasn't going to get between those two any time soon even though I had a feeling that Tawny was coming down on my side a little more forcefully than she would've otherwise due to personal considerations. Almost had the relay...the hull rocked a little and I pulled my head out. Quentin was supervising the removal of the entire top right missile pod. Apparently they'd decided that it would be quicker to load the pod separately. I shrugged and waited until they'd pulled it free of the stubby little vertical tail--not entirely unlike Jenny's taut little ass, come to think of it--before sticking my head back in.

"What's going on? Look, acting imbecile, I can tell you what's going on!"

Uh oh.

"Something is wrong with PTMC operations, MN0012 zorched twenty four million people and we got caught in the sideband of the beam, the UEG just came and goddamn NUKED Lunar Colony Twelve, didn't even bother to help us back into stable orbit, and we've heard nothing from anybody because all the goddamn consoles are locked out...nothing but 'vegetate until you're called on'! Well, I can give plenty of pretty pictures to this puffed-up sightseeing lackey..."

_"(Live. Watch it.)"_

Jenny's voice was flat, unemotional, and I knew she was only that way when violence was in the offing. I yanked my hands and head out as the entire circuitry of the turret came to life and the cannon muzzles rotated one turn, the click of the breech slamming a round home much more noticable with the panel off. Tawny was frantically yelling into the comm panel, something about getting another security squad up here ASAP. Quentin and his work crew had frozen in place, one of the younger technicians looking absolutely terrified with both arms up to the elbows into the guts of the missile pod, and Hannah was headed at a fast trot this way. She wasn't much to fill out a jumpsuit, but my concern was less on her attributes and more on her accessories, as I had few doubts that the pistol slung at her hip was anything less than potentially lethal...not to mention her mental state. Not everybody was still numb with shock and from the look on her face I wouldn't have wanted to place money on her mental state being stable. The faint whine of the turret motor was distinctive, and it was without any surprise that I saw the movement from the corner of my eye. I knew as surely as I knew I was breathing that the moment Hannah made a movement to clear that weapon that it'd be her last. It didn't change that greasy feeling of ice-skating on catastrophe. Nothing I could do could really change the way things would unfold...posturing would probably make her try something ill-advised, going out to meet her likewise. Merely standing there and waiting, trying to project 'cute', was the least confrontational option. Maybe it was the whine from the guards' rifles as they snapped them on and pointed them at her that made her stop, glaring pure fury at Quentin, or maybe it was the fact that stuffed suits usually didn't have missiles being loaded onto their ships. She sized me up with a quick contemptuous glance and leaned to either side, trying to look past me and into the closed cockpit.

"All right, you poor sorry bastard, where's your boss? I got an earful for the coward."

For the first time in a few minutes, I figured I had a chance to defuse this without tasers and nerve gas being involved. I smiled as nonthreateningly as I could and spread my hands in a shrug.

"If you mean that snake Dravis back on Shiva, I already gave him both barrels---only metaphorically speaking---"

A bit of a disappointed look. It wasn't really much of a lie.

"--but against my better judgment, I'm here anyway and he ain't. Sort of a rescue operation. What in the hell happened to your admin wing?"

Distract, deflect, be somewhere else when the counterblow hit. Get her thinking, get her united against a common enemy. And don't let them smell your tension. It wasn't working, and she took another half-step forward, then stopped. Wiped her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand, swore in Afrikaans, and spat on the floor.

"Ahhhh FUCK!"

She sighed, furious expression beginning to fade. Like a fever, her anger had broken and just had to burn itself out in other ways.

"Listen, whatever your name is, you can tell that worthless stuffed shirt he can get his own infinitely precious ass down here and see how little there is to rescue. Mine MN0012's fucking gone, man, there's nothing left. The UEG pounded the shit out of the place with a barrage of plasma missiles and topped it all off with dropping an Earthshaker on Elsie Twelve. The crater's no Aitken basin but it might as well be...listen, you said rescue operation? I got a partner down there, she ran the defense board on the old science outpost they still run and you need a shuttle and a pilot, right?"

Desperation was creeping into her voice, and I started to understand a little of what was making her explode at the moment.

_"(Could be useful intel...firsthand accounts of what happened. Right mine, too. I can remote her ship if she pulls any more dumbass stunts like that and I think there's a reason Tawny must've pulled her off perimeter patrols, yeah? Better with us than poisoning our supplies here.)"_

"Tell you what..."

I said, carefully.

"I need a shuttle and maybe an expert pilot to try and pull out the hostages. I don't need a revenge-mad hotshot. I know how you feel, my folks were in Rio, but I need ice-cold precision. If you can get it under control enough to get Tawny to sign off on letting you fly this--and not slapping you in the brig--you can run your shuttle. But if you fuck up, or can't deal with the consequences you just made, I'm taking over via remote, period. This is too risky for mistakes. Fair?"

She smiled then, grimly.

"Bastard."

Without especial rancor. Another squad was charging across the hangar bay now, rifles at the ready and their boots clattering on the floor, barking the usual unimaginative orders for her to step away from the dignitary and come with them peacefuly.

"I'll see what I can do."

And, turning, she was swept into the midst of them, leaving the hangar bay entirely with Tawny in tow, shooting me a horrifiedly apologetic look over her shoulder as the doors slammed. Quentin let out a deep breath, shaking his head, as the local guards slung their guns back over their shoulders.

"And THAT, Mr. Corbell, was The Hamster."

"Is she always like that?"

Sometimes they were, the kind of people who clutched anger to them and never managed to let it go. It made them quite effective in combat, but was both exploitable and tended to reduce their lifespans rather quickly. The last few days had wrought some pretty massive changes in people, though, and I wasn't going to make snap judgments when I had the chance to get more intel first.

Quentin paused diplomatically for a moment, taking advantage of the need to muscle the second pod free while the first was being loaded to consider his reply. He shouted a couple profane cautions to his work crew when it looked like they were about to let the pod slip and possibly scratch the finish before answering.

"Not this bad, no....the rumor mill has her and Tawny going way back but the stories don't match whether it's as friends or enemies. Mostly we try to stay out of the way when they really get their teeth into each other. Don't worry, she probably won't shoot you."

The cannon barrels spun backward, a sharp clack marking the ejection of the chambered slug back into the ammo hopper and acting as punctuation.

"Hey, was that...man, you've got one of those personal-protection AIs in there, don't you? I never thought they were such a good idea, with the whole disproportionate responses to threats and all, but...."

Quentin shrugged, standing between the two tail stabilizers while the arm carrying the second pod retracted. He was already starting to undo the bolts on the third pod.

"Yeah, you could say that..."

I commented drily.

"I've always felt it was better to be alive and paying for any collateral damage than dead from something that would've been easily avoidable if the built in system had had the brains to be willing to shoot through a groundcar to take out a threat if needed, for example...but I've spent a lot of time fine-tuning the system. We work well together by this point. Listen, did you ever work with the Magnus XL mining ships? I always heard they were a lot better suited for the heavy-duty work than even the GX."

There wasn't much time left before Tawny would be storming back to apologize profusely to me, I figured, and it was best to keep Quentin distracted from trying to figure out all of our secrets. Besides, there was going to be a hell of a flap once those flight-line guys got their hands into the third and fourth pods and found those couple last surprises, complete with warning radiation trefoils. Technically it was breaking a few laws to even disclose that I was carrying them to people without clearance to handle and use them, and so I hadn't told Quentin anything. If he was smart he'd pretend to not notice either and not empty the pods. I wanted alternating loadouts of Mercuries and homings, split between pods. That way I could salvo off two of each at need or split them and always have the split, without risking a single damaging hit on a pod knocking out an entire supply of one kind or another. The two green-banded guided missiles that were on top of the third and fourth pods would be loaded into the top pods for recon ease--I'd been told that there were a few left in the stockpile--so it was just a matter of time. Across the hangar, another crew was bustling around Hannah's shuttle, refueling it and at least one luckless wight with a high-voltage scraper busy trying to ionize away the long silvery streaks of metal her landing skids had left on the way in.

The older man shook his head, moving to loosen the bolts on the fourth pod as the empty arm came back up for the third and gently pulled it free of the fin.

"Nah, I never really worked with the XLs. We got one in instead of one of the GLs but that was just a little before I got my transfer to Luna. I heard they were popular with the maintenance crews just because they'd run longer while further out of tune than the GLs, the UEG hadta really neuter the design. The hell do you keep up with maintenance intervals on that power plant and thruster ductwork, anyway? Seems like I spent way too long welding up leaks and you always had to tear half the hull apart to even get to the piping."

_"(The secret is to make sure somebody else covers it...)"_

Jenny commented, as I went back to making the last few connections inside the turret. I raised my voice, not sure if he could still hear me.

"On these the ducting is the same ceramic as the armor. Cheap to replace but a real bitch to shape! I usually have a clause in my contract that all wear and tear associated with the mission will be ameliorated to approved specifications, it's boilerplate but takes a lot of that expense away from my pocket. Sure, I don't clear as much in the end, but it's worth it for the operational flexibility of the spaceframe..."

"Yeah, I guess I can see that. Heads up, here comes Her Nibs..."

Bloody hell. I just needed three more minutes in here. It was beginning to look like I'd never finish.

_"(Wiggle your butt while you work.)"_

Came the unhelpful suggestion.

_"(Maybe it'll distract her for a few moments and get her to check in with Quentin and his boys first.)"_

OK, maybe that WAS worth a try after all. Whistling a few jaunty notes to fake my way into a song, I found myself absently humming one of the several suspiciously-choreographed hits from the tumultuous social upheavals of the 70s that I liked. They didn't have much redeeming musical value but they were still fun to dance to. Jenny sang the Institute's cleverly-derived obscene verses into my ear quietly in between humming her own harmonies and my resulting half-wiggles were at least fairly honest reflections of wanting to move. I was still sore as hell, though, but it wasn't without a certain degree of relief that I heard Tawny's boots stop behind me, then after a long moment pick up again as she walked around to the wings and hollered a query at Quentin. I breathed a sigh of relief and snapped in the last connection, running the diagnostic probe over it to ensure it was solid and would stay that way no matter what the flight stresses. Jenny grunted in satisfaction, stopping her humming. Considerately, she switched her own voice into a playback of the actual song where she'd stopped. It was a little distracting but still catchy, and I pulled my head and hands out of the cavity without being asked.

Tawny had apparently been satisfied by the answer Quentin gave and was asking something about Hannah's shuttle when she noticed me pull back and immediately refocused her attention

"Mr. Corbell---Jerome--I am _so_ sorry for Hannah's behavior, she's been under a lot of stress..."

I held up a hand for her silence, and she shut up immediately. Not for the first time I wished I could have that kind of power over people more often. The turret panel pulled back up into position and latched closed before the motor spun up. Tawny and Quentin flinched back for a moment, hearing that geared high buzz and watching the muzzles spin blurringly fast before noticing nothing was coming out and relaxing a bit. The work crew on the shuttle across the bay didn't seem to notice. I heard the first clack, like an enormous bolt slamming shut, from the capacitors discharging across an air gap instead of into the driving magnets and grinned when the missile crew twitched in response. Without much ceremony I stuck my fingers in my ears, still hearing the song via bone conduction, and listened to the muffled clatter as Jenny kept the firing coils activating as soon as each barrel rotated past the firing point, one position past the breech. It was like somebody ripping an enormous bolt of cloth, except heard through the kind of amplifiers you'd get at a rock concert. It also wasn't terribly good for the barrels, but you had to test these things. The ripping clatter didn't last long at all--after all, we already knew the cannon worked, it was more a test to see if my fat fingers had broken what worked before--soon replaced with a godawful repeating bang like...well, like discharging all those capacitors at once. The stuttering roar was almost reminiscent of an ancient machine gun and only lasted for two seconds before the barrels spun down to a halt, glowing faintly orange. I could smell the heated composites and the sharp tinge of the ionized air. It smelled fresh, like the air after a big thunderstorm.

Tawny looked askance at me, pulling her fingers out of her ears as I did the same. Quentin was chuckling up top, steadying the fourth pod on the picker arm, the entire test having not ruffled his feathers at all once he saw that the self-defense system wasn't going to carve a hole through the back wall of the bay.

"....um....yes, about Miss Talbot, I can assure you she'll be facing being stripped of her pilot's rating and held on charges, I'm really sorry about that. She was one of my best pilots until she just came unhinged..."

I knew, she knew, she had to make the offer. If I was upset, the grand poo-bah from HQ, then all the charges would be piled on, and depending on friends or enemies, either made to stick or dismissed after I was safely out of the area. If I wasn't upset, then it could still go either way--vanished due to not making a scene, or intensified due to embarassing Tawny in front of somebody with my kind of blank check. On second thought, this kind of power could go to hell. Let Jenny get involved with power and control, I didn't have the kind of mind or the lack of empathy to want to be pulling strings.

"As it happens, Tawny, she had a couple good points...and no harm done, after all. I could run the shuttle through the ship's AI but it might be better to have a dedicated competent pilot who's got plenty of hours with it. Assuming she can put aside her personal animosity and that I can borrow her out of the brig for a bit, do you think she'd be suitable for a high-speed high-stakes high-precision mission?"

Lord I hated doing this, even as I tossed her a no-harm-done sort of smile. Because she wanted to please me on some level, now I knew I could rely on her to give an unbiased judgement using what she knew to best answer my question--because I'd made my success something that now she personally wanted without going into larger details of scope.

"Well..."

She sighed, running a hand exasperatedly through her long black hair and taking a moment to consider the question seriously.

"She's got the technical chops. I won't argue that. Came out of UEG armed forces with great qualifications. She just has seemed content to do low-activity stuff like fly security patrols and occasionally deal with trouble with drunken miners in the transient areas and bars or bordellos on the station...at least up until a couple days ago when we lost almost an entire duty roster when the beam fringe caught our residental arm on its way to Rio. Since then she's been acting like she's back in the military and not content to just sit here. If you go down there with her I don't know if you can keep her under control, no offense."

_"(They didn't even catch the beam--I've been looking through the logs, the ones I can recover, and all that brushed them was the noncoherent edges of the fringe. Practically pulled them out of orbit even so. If they'd gotten hit by the real edge, there'd be nothing left but a cloud of metallic vapor. Maybe not even. Dammit, get them to put the damn minelayer on the shuttle.)"_

Tawny did have a point but none I'd not already mentioned it to Hannah.

"Look--"

I temporized, holding out my hands in a placating gesture.

"I've got a top-of-the-line AI in there. If anything happens I don't like or that gets out of control, I promise I'll shut her out of flight operations. She won't be doing much unless she breaks the window and starts sending smoke signals. Besides, there's a chance she might be able to help rescue her partner. If she can persuade you she's got a cool enough head--and of course apologize to your standards--I could use her. "

Shrug. She was silent for a moment, then reluctantly shook her head.

"Jerome...you know the last guy who headed down there never came out, right? High-priority flight plan filed through Shiva, I cleared all our traffic and the last I saw of Mr. St John he was doing a low-altitude run into the loading entrance of MN0012. After that, nothing. I think I saw a military dropship, but the blip on the sensors was real faint. The next thing to come out of that mine nearly knocked us out of the sky and did a number on Earth, and the next thing to go in were missiles. Shit, I probably shouldn't be telling you any of this but I'm betting with that kind of clearance you're classified higher than I am anyway. If you think she'd be of any help, she's yours. She has the _potential_ to be an asset and that's all I can safely say for her now."

It was a more honest assessment than I'd planned on. I wrinkled my nose in thought. Dammit, I hated to drag anybody else into this mess but that was the peril of command.

"...Awright. I'll give her her shot, if only to keep hostiles off my back and defuse her explosive temper if possible. Let her sit in the brig until the last minute, though, if you don't mind--at least that way she can have a chance to get as cooled down as she can. In the meantime, I need a blasting charge dropper rig attached to her shuttle. Plasma charges if you've got 'em on a separate dropper, otherwise both droppers can use regular charges. I'll need topoffs of that when we get back, and I hope like hell you've got medical facilities here too, because there may be more people coming back than left."

Took no time at all to make the decision, and that in itself worried me. Things were starting to accelerate now, tumbling from tiny snowballs into avalanches. Tawny nodded and turned to join the other work crew by the shuttle, shooting me an enigmatic look that I couldn't make out anything other than pity and frustration from before she was gone. I sighed and turned to regard Quentin staring at me, clearing his throat to get my attention.

"Mr. Corbell, you've got some...ah....interesting hardware in those last pods."

The tech working on unloading the old missiles from the pods was moving as if a millimeter of imprecision would cost him his life, the color gone from his face. A pile of old concussion missiles lay to the side and the two loaded pods were stacked along the picker arm, ready for reassembly. They'd been moving fast and I had to concede that they knew their stuff. The destroyer work probably helped, even if the UEG wasn't likely to have used them as anything but grunt labor, and of course they had to resuply all the mining ships that needed stand-off rock crackers. Even though the pod was perfectly lined up with the cart's feeder system, the poor bastard was nevertheless guiding a red-striped homing missile by hand along the loading rail and into the pod, two other people on the crew shining portable work lights down into the pod so that he wouldn't miss a detail or risk a mis-step. When you didn't know exactly what would and what wouldn't set off something nasty, it was best to ensure no mistakes.

"Quentin...not to step on you too hard here, but there are some conversations I'm reasonably sure you and I shouldn't be having unless you've got a lot more levels of security clearance than I think you do. Do NOT remove anything both you and your crew are not authorized to work on, I would prefer it if only concussion missiles ever became visible out of those pods, and I anticipate that anything interesting that you or your workers see will not be discussed or speculated on...do I make myself quite clear?"

I had to be a bastard about it. He'd not been smart enough to pretend not to notice--but then I supposed he had to make sure what I wanted to be done. Those damned things had been a pain in my ass ever since Jenny traded for them a few years back. Said they'd give us prestige, a last ace in the hole, a painless way out if things were ever unsaveable. I said they were a liability, a phenomenal threat, and likely to have us going down in history in some pretty unsavory company, possibly involving gigantic lizards demolishing whatever we hit with them. She'd managed to persuade me eventually but just thinking of those squat black bloated atomic warheads sitting in the pods gave me the willies. I doubted my own ability to ever make use of the so-called 'mega' missiles. They didn't pack the punch of an Earthshaker but they sure hit harder than any of the 'shaker's submunitions and weren't anything like as tidy. There was a considerable difference between a pure overpressure wave and, well, thermonuclear fusion, and I couldn't imagine needing to use them to ever tip the balance.

Quentin nodded perfectly eagerly. He looked at me with mingled horror and disgust, like I'd just had his sister right there on the bay floor.

"Crystal, MD-1032. Whatever you're doing, I hope that you will find our missile loadout to be _all_ you'll need. If you'll excuse me."

And he was back to work, supervising the loading of the third pod.

_"(Looks like you lost a potential friend.)"_

She wasn't without a bit of a sympathetic tone.

"(Eh. Life's short anyway. He'll be pissed when we pop the outpost and the military station if he's watching the sensors, though....These homers are the standard ones that can be switched to guided, right?")

You couldn't dwell on it. You really couldn't. No time for explanations, hardly ever. No time and no leeway for apologies, just the job and what you had to do to get it done. Everything else was a luxury that boiled away under stress like campaign promises after elections. And there was plenty of time to let everybody else do the easy work now, leaving me with nothing to do for now. I could see the other crew swarming over Hannah's shuttle still. From the looks of it they were going over the avionic systems with a fine-toothed comb and inspecting everything they could get at, spurred on by Tawny's watchful eye. She was really getting things done, I had to say. I could see the lift coming back down from the secured area with another cart and guard, this time standing boredly next to the minelaying rig I'd requested and an entire pile of ammunition. The doors hissed open again to the rest of the station and another work party came stumbling out, looking like they'd been woken up a little too soon. Well, this _was_ high-priority, and from the way they were double-timing it over to the minelayer they had an entirely separate goal. Suited me fine. Not like there'd been any traffic since I got here anyway.

_"(I won't vouch for the lifespan of the propellant or the acuteness of the turns, but I can set the sensors to pick up a broad spectrum of emitters, both mechanical and organic, and feed back live telemetry. The bad news is that they won't really be guided that way--a predefined course, sure, but if you want to make a last-minute course correction you're shit outta luck. Also if it hits something--like a robot or a hostage--the results won't be humane or ineffective, unless you WANT me to disable the warhead packages. We should have that talk.")_

I leaned up against the wingtip on the other side of the hull, looking away from the missile loading operation and the shuttle further to the other side. It was a rare moment of visual stillness and I did enjoy it. Everything was still sore to some degree, and with the way things usually went I'd get loosened up enough to be completely stiff by the time I had to clamber back into the cockpit. Oh well.

"(Dear, I never in a million years thought I'd hear you agitating for the less lethal option.")


	10. A Little Less Conversion

Chapter 10: A Little Less Conversion

"Courage is being scared to death…and saddling up anyway."

– John Wayne

_"(Hmf! I'm thinking of the less lethal TO US option. Picture yourself as a hostile mining robot, fresh from slicing through a squishie and frying a bunch more in return for being attacked. Something bounces off you. What makes you more tempted to destroy all humans--if it explodes and your buddies notice you're dead or if it bounces off like a dud and shatters into a bajillion pieces?)"_

I backhanded the leading edge of the wing affectionately and got a little shock for my pains, her reflexes with the afterburner system far faster than mine.

"When you put it that way. I think I'd be upset that somebody was doing a little recon, blame it on the squishies as the most logical suspect and go on the warpath. Possibly frying this station since it's the only thing accessible to the power transfer network now that the main dish at MN0012 is down. I think I'd be upset less if I was dead and my buddies did a sweep of the mine and saw nothing amiss. Maybe they'd put it down to unexploded ordinance. And the hostage? Kinetic kill or explosive kill, it's kind of academic..."

She shocked me in the ass then, enough volts to get through the jumpsuit. I may've sworn out loud but I wasn't leaning on the wingtip any more and I sure was listening closely.

_"(Idiot! If we go slow and dud-esque, they might mistake the missile for a recon drone. A robot like them. If they've got their original programming to any degree and they're MINE ROBOTS, they're going to be able to recognize explosives and explosions from a good distance. They may not even notice something like a rock bouncing off the armor. If you're still determined to get us killed in the service of humanity, at least try and let us go out with the kind of solid decisions that can't really be second-guessed by those armchair battlers who spend most of their time out of their heads on the fumes from the paint they use for those miniatures. Can you think of a compelling reason to leave the warheads armed?)"_

I was thinking. Thinking hard. Normally her quip about scale reenactors would have had me flinging a barb back at her about her attempts to teach me grand strategy with little bits of candy on bunk sheets--and her curves underneath to mimic terrain--but this seemed like the sort of decision a lot of lives would depend on.

"(You know what it really is? I just utterly despise the idea of hitting an enemy who's already responsible for so much death and destruction, and even if that hit is accidental, deliberately making it as nonfatal as possible. I know it's for a larger goal but it still eats at me. I want to make the bastards burn.)"

_"(You think I don't?)"_

She shot right back, her voice unexpectedly venting the furious rage and icy passion that she'd held under control until now.

_"(I despise your entire PLAN, nevermind that it makes the best tactical sense. Fuck the shuttle, fuck the hostages, fuck blowing the mine first-thing. I want to hunt the bastards. Run through those tunnels like a rat in a maze full of tasty mice. To hell with the cheese when there's meat. Pin a bot against the wall with the mass driver while slicing off its appendages and body with the laser. Leave the central processing unit for last, blind the sensors with a flare, and ram it until it explodes...leave the mine strewn with rubble and debris of those who stood in our way and only when we were done slaughtering everything nonhuman that moved would we rescue the hostages. And gun-camera footage of the carnage and aftermath would be broadcast to our next destination on every frequency and channel to let them know we were on the hunt and they were next. Get the military to interdict the PTMC facility exits and take out the local power relays...and save reactor destruction for the complete-annihilation dessert. Across the whole fucking solar system. Rebroadcast it to Earth until every single person affected by the tragedy had had their fill of seeing our revenge and started treating our little excursion like a game show. Do you understand, Jerome? I don't know if they feel fear, pain, terror, loss, sadness. But for what they did to Earth, I want every one of them to experience the collective loss of every human being who felt anything at all about Rio. I want to find a way to maim, torture, and paralyze with fear every last one of those motherfuckers who decided they could mess with the human race! But we don't have the time or luxury to do that...so do NOT bitch to me about having to pull punches!)"_

Dad, afterward, had had his doubts about whether I was just in love with a machine, a clever custom-voiced AI, but I'd never doubted after the first few hours. Hearing her snarl so viciously raised goosebumps all over my entire body as I instinctively fluffed up what little fur I had to meet the challenge naked in her voice. Nothing not very much alive could feel like that, could react in that sort of manner. She'd only spoken this way once before, only found one foe worthy of the sheerly inhuman venom she was capable of unleashing for, and those were the terrorists who had been responsible for her death on the Institute grounds. She still had the ability to genuinely frighten me and this was one of those times.

"(.....Got it.)"

I managed to reply after a few draggingly long moments. When you were used to being held comfortingly tight, it was sometimes hard to remember that you'd knowingly snuggled up with an anaconda and one with deadly venom to boot.

"(....If it makes you feel _any_ better, if there is something controlling this entire jiggery-pokery fuckery, I'll put a nuke in its brain just to make sure. And we can try to talk to the media relations department of PTMC to get a footage release for the gun-camera feeds. I know it's not what you want. What WE want. But it'll have to be enough. And I don't want to go down there brooding and slow and dark...if we don't make it out in time or get mobbed, there's been enough brooding. I want to go out with a laugh in my throat and your lips on mine.)"

It was her turn to shut up for a while. I leaned back against the hull in the meantime, nestling my back into that comfy transition between hull and wing and letting the back of my head thud back against the downward curve just below where the cockpit latched. She was still icy cold and I could feel it through the suit and through my hair, but what was a little physical discomfort against emotional support? Like the wind of something large passing just overhead, I felt the brush of a whole series of complicated emotions sleeting through the back of my perception. None lasted long enough to pin down or clarify further...just a dense wavefront, quickly there and then quickly gone. It was a lot more pronounced that it'd ever been before and I blinked in confusion at the impact. Shrugged. Patted the wing with my glove affectionately, and felt a brief sensation of a hand pressing down atop mine for the briefest of moments. The way we had to work it was almost impossible for her to break down, really vent, kick back and take a load off, so the tension always came erupting through in the strangest ways. We'd be all right, come what might.

The hull rocked slightly, and all I had to do was make a curious noise to find out what was going on. Didn't want to move. The chill felt kind of good by this point. Kind of didn't want to know what was going on, either. Figured it was probably the pods being mounted back onto the tailfins and that somebody would tell me when it was done. So there I stood for a few peaceful moments before something occurred to me, a little belatedly.

"(....hey, you think there's any truth to the robot invasion force thing?)"

She chuckled tiredly at me, sounding a little irritable still but more or less back on an even keel.

_"(Hell no. Either that's his way of putting fire under your feet or the best guess of Post-Terran's intelligence spazzes or an outright lie. We had a lot of info come back about hardware but not enough telemetry to establish any kind of motive. With the military breathing down the Director's neck to step aside and let them scourge the facilities, I'm willing to bet it's a lie. Then again, if we're being used as patsys in this it's not unreasonable to expect that there might be root __**causes**__ of this that we're not being told and footage we haven't been privy to. It still bothers me how easily he agreed to your frankly ballsy terms. Suffice to say I'll be keeping an eye on our back and you don't want to know how or the logic behind why. As usual. By the way, the first two pods are back on and in the green, they're handling the last two with the expected kid gloves. .....for the love of Vishnu they actually registered it as....)"_

The traces of barely suppressed giggling crept back into the little voice in my eardrums.

_"(And I should inform you that the Hamster Ball over there is almost rigged to be dropping dung pellets throughout the trails. Yes, sweetheart, I firmly expect you to keep that image in your mind the entire time.)"_

That was the woman I knew. It wasn't often that I could twist the knife the other way and score a couple points of my own but it was always worth a try.

"(Ah, that doesn't bother me. Hannah's a girl. I don't have to imagine gigantic shuttle-sized hamster balls, plural, dragging behind me.)"

Silence. A bit of static. I noticed the running lights flicker and grinned to myself. She always had a supremely visual mind and I figured I'd just sabotaged it pretty well. From above I could hear Quentin distressedly call something down to one of his crew members about the diagnostic readout suddenly spiking intermittently on and off and had they done this, connected that, did they all want to vanish if the special ordinance touched off? When I heard her royal blueness again she sounded completely breathless with laughter.

_("...hee hee....damn you. I give you the point and will seek my revenge later. I make no promises about how I'll project the Balls in your HUD, though. Be warned, it looks like we're a few minutes away from being ready for our little dance party. Use the facilities if you gotta, grab a ration or two, rescue your pet hamster from durance vile, certify you're in sound mind and body...)"_

Great, like I needed the reminder. Stepping from the hull, I glanced up. Quentin and his lads were almost done, gingerly bolting the fourth pod back into place. The covers were securely locked shut again and if Jenny hadn't complained, I'd assume they were fine. Time to take a little stroll. I ran a hand through my hair, brushing the thick frost out of it and trying to untangle the ends a little while I walked around Jenny's back and toward the security shuttle. The old missiles had been stacked on the cart and the guards were already beginning to drive them back toward the waiting munitions elevator. Quentin saw me departing as he climbed down carefully--the work crew already standing around and looking impatient--and called out, still not looking happy in the slightest.

"Need anything else, MD-1032? Ammunition, systems checked, reactor refueled, any other special requests?"

_"(Windows washed? Oil checked? Little pine tree air freshener? I'm all in the green. They did a great job, even cleaned and re-lubricated the ejection rails.)"_

"No thanks, Mr. Brown--I'll buy you and your crew one round for every target one of these guys takes down, sound fair? I'll let Tawny know you did a great job."

I waved at him and kept going. He looked sour but not quite as annoyed as he gathered up his workers and began the long hike to the hangar doors. I ended my own long hike just in time to nearly be run over by a fast-moving duo rushing the nozzle of the fuel hose back to its secured receptacle, a fine mist of residual deuterium slurry rising from the frigid tip. Hydrogen was common enough, but it was still nice not to have to worry about fuel other than what it took to keep the reactor hot, although I was probably going to have to get Jenny topped back up sooner or later. They never noticed me, clad as they were in heavy protective suits, but I didn't mind. Tawny was up in the cockpit, I could see her standing up in the copilot's seat with her entire head and shoulders out of sight inside some service panel or another. It was an indelicate position that left her ample breasts flattened hard against the front transparisteel panel but I may have been the only one with enough free time to notice. On a whim and detouring around the technician on a lift cart who was doing something to the hydraulic ramp struts I headed up the opened boarding ramp at the rear of the craft myself. I'd never been in one and while Jenny could call up plenty of schematics and a convincing walkthrough it wasn't the same as seeing it for yourself.

The ramp was well-textured, a nice surface for dragging people up if it came to that but not so contoured they'd need to be completely lifted, but the interior wasn't exactly reassuring. The molded benches that ran the full length of the bay were the same texture as the floor...walls...and the ceiling overhead. If it weren't for the recessed ceiling lights and the fact that a surfeit of five-point harnesses sprouted from the walls along the inward-facing benches against either outside wall, I would've sworn that the entire back half of the shuttle was extruded from a single die. Maybe it had been and they'd put the hull on later. No windows...just depressing pebbled beige. It smelled of disinfectant back there, and I had to figure that it was easy to hose out the blood or bodies of anybody who wasn't back there by choice. As for the door to the control cabin, I'd banked in places that had less secure vault doors. Jenny whistled in appreciation, but I couldn't help but think that this sort of ship was what got used to break up any talk of unionizing, silence dissidents, or just quietly remove PTMC's little embarassments. It was suicide to attempt to get any kind of fair treatment to the company responsible for supplying so many raw materials to the UEG factories...hardly anybody had that kind of infrastructure to build out like PTMC had. And they were about to have a lot less infrastructure before Jenny and I were done with them. We'd be toppling the giant, as it were. We HAD to survive if only to see the political and economic aftermath.

The cabin door was open, though, and I wandered through, glancing upward since the other alternative was regarding Ms. Bordain's ass at my eye level. Something in the panel she was working on spat sparks and she swore but stayed put until I heard the distinctive hiss of coolant flowing. Her chief streak was showing and I liked her a little more for her dedication.

"Got the little bastard! Yama, don't just _stand _there, make sure the rig drops its loads on cue..."

That was when she ducked down out of the panel, twisting to the side, and saw me standing there and glancing up at her.

"...Oh, sorry Jerome. Heh, so now you've had a chance to look this old bird over, what do you think?"

...And we were right back to the terrible flirting. What I wanted to say about both her and the security shuttle was "Tries too hard, too scary when you think it through, probably a bad idea to keep around." What did I wind up actually saying?

"Looks perfectly suited for some heavy action...a welcome and memorable ride in back, no doubt. If, of course, it'll take its load on cue."

I had the satisfaction of seeing Tawny blush at the same moment I heard Jenny's amused snort in my ears. It was a talent that she was partially responsible for, after all.

"Well! I certainly hope it performs to your expectations. I take it you're loaded and ready for blastoff?"

"Stuffed full, yup yup, and aching for the chance to vent some of it at a suitable target."

Her blush was spreading. I watched with interest as she sealed up the panel again and climbed down to stand on the decking again, wondering absently how far the blush would spread.

"...In that case maybe it's time to call in a helping hand or two and get you going."

I'd give her that, she rallied pretty well.

"If you'll excuse me...feel free to spend a little time in the hot seat, touch whatever you think you'll enjoy. I'll make sure Hannah is out of the brig as quickly as I can cut the orders."

We eeled past each other, her plans of a little squeezy body contact rather spoiled by my agility in hopping past her and into the pilot's seat while she turned sideways and slid through the door. The last I saw of her was her clomping down the ramp and toward the communicator in a nearby structural brace as I made myself comfortable in the seat, leaning back and letting my vision take in the various indicators and controls. It was a lot busier in here than in the GX, that was for sure. Designed for two pilots to run without any AI complicating matters, everything was manual and overrideable. Piloting one of these would be like being the ball in a pachinko machine...a thousand levers and buttons. It was no doubt cheaper to build and maintain to have so few electronic parts--after all, you could rad-harden contacts a lot easier than ICs--and off-the-shelf trajectory modules were cheap enough.

"(Been a while since I had the hot seat on something that actually burned fuel for propulsion.)"

I commented offhandedly to Jenny, stretching my arms over the control board like a concert organist warming up. Everything was accessible even to my relatively short limbs and I nodded in satisfaction. It was an adequate design. Good for a workout, easy to fly badly but possible to fly very well indeed, even if that meant flipping switches above your head while pushing pedals with your toes and adjusting the control yoke with a knee. Not elegant, but capable. For all I loved to rag on PTMC, they knew what they needed and paid enough to make sure they got it economically.

_"(I wouldn't want to fly it in atmosphere, but for little jaunts in space or low-speed manuevers it seems pretty well sorted out. Trying to talk to it is like trying to talk to a lobotomized monkey, though. It's a good thing we've got a pilot because I wouldn't want to guarantee I could fly it via remote if I had to.)"_

That would have been a great thing to know earlier. I said as much.

_"(Hey, standard factory specs for these have them with the full computer suite. PTMC must've commissioned a special run with bare-minimum electronics. I thought there was just an issue with the diagnostic ports being locked to a different set of codes or something. Sorry. I'm not infallible.")_

"(You make it easy to forget that sometimes. Stop being so good and I'll start doubting your omniscience more often, how's that?)"

I shot back, settling down in the chair with a sigh. It was soft and plush, the sort of place where one was expected to spend a great deal of time without having to deal with insane g-forces or combat stresses beyond what a standard harness would protect you from. It was a lot more comfortable than mine. I was going to be spending enough flattened time in my own in the next little while, it was nice to kick back and stretch out for a few minutes.

_"(Well aren't you the little charmer. That's the second-nicest thing anybody's said to me today. Nice to know I still turn your head.")_

"(Second? Bah, half the time with you it's more like 'turn my head and cough'! What do you want to hit first, anyway? Science outpost or military station?)"

The nice thing about having such a damn capable lass watching over me was that I could close my eyes and relax pretty much anywhere. I did so, scooting a little forward in the chair and wiggling a bit to get comfortable.

_"(Oh, some junior hull designer spotted me back on Shiva and called me a jewel. Oh, like you need to ask. Outpost. They're going to have the best sensors and have the fewest defenses. Once we put their eyes out and get a chance to assess what we're facing, we'll be a little more ready to take on the more fortified place. Besides, we'll get the best chance to evaluate Hamster's performance under pressure if she's going to rescue her partner first. If everything goes to shit, Tawny's been keeping an admin shuttle on hot standby for evacuations and we ought to be able to get that launched with not a lot of prep needed.")_

I'd never seen her without some sort of backup plan. I had a feeling her idea of fun was to sit down and think about everything that could possibly go wrong, then have contingencies, then plot how those contingencies could go wrong and so forth. On those nights when I just couldn't fall asleep, that was the kind of game I played with myself. The 'think like Jenny' game inevitably resulted in confusion, losing track of chains of events, and a crash to sleep once my brain got tired of chewing its own tail.

"(No objections. Weapon preference?)"

We'd not dealt with renegade mine robots before. Sadly, most mine robots tended to be well-armored against both impact and directed energy--in other words, most of our gunnery options.

_"(Hell if I know. Start with the lasers, just shoot at the shapes. I'll handle fine beam collimation and harmonizing, see if I can find weak spots with every salvo. I'll have more data when I can get it. If we run across something that's easily dispatched, test out the mass driver.)"_

I yawned, grinning and stretching my arms behind my head, brushing the back wall of the cramped cabin.

"(Now are you sure you don't want to fly this entire thing? I'll stay up here and wave a little flag?)"

Theoretically there was no reason that she couldn't. Faster reflexes, better sensors, blah blah. But we stuck to our working arrangement unless there was a compelling need to act outside it. She was the grand strategist, I was the local tactician. She'd point out an objective and I'd go slugging my way in. Why change what worked? I wasn't serious and we both knew it.

_"(Go you one better. You go down there in a space suit with that slugthrower of yours, singlehandedly play cowboy, and I'll vegetate up here and cheer you on. Even cool down some brews and warm up some babes for you.")_

I laughed and shook my head.

"(Wouldn't get far. How about we both ditch and spend some quality time on Fiji? Work on a tan or a new paintjob? I'd love to see you try to make that projection surf.)"

_"(Deal. After we're done here. Besides, we're gonna need plenty of time somewhere scorchy after spending any time around Charon. Look alive, your little pet is heading this way under armed guard.)"_

Under....? I clambered out of the seat with some degree of difficulty and headed back toward the ramp, peeking my head around the edge to see Hannah in the middle of another lump of faceless helmeted guards with weapons. She looked sardonically amused, and I made it a point to hop off the ramp and head to meet her.

When I got to the lead guard, she flipped her helmet visor up and saluted me, the group stopping in place.

"Material Defender 1032..."

My god was I getting tired of hearing that!

"...by orders of Ms. Bouvain we are to release Hannah Talbot to your custody for special assignment. Please put your thumbprint here to accept responsibility."

The guard, a tall slender woman, looked exhausted as she presented her electronic pad to me. If she'd had to put up with Hannah's temper or tongue the entire way up, I could understand the look. I wasted no time flattening my finger on the pad, and she snapped her visor back down with a relieved look. Her squad formed up to one side, leaving Hannah smirking up at me. The little formation marched back toward the hangar doors, the lady in the lead pausing for a moment to mutter.

"Dammit, Hamster, you've got to stop doing this."

And then they were retreating. Hannah cocked her head.

"What? You'd better be ready. I had to kiss a lot of ass for this. What'd you do to the Ball? I saw you in there."

She had all the friendliness of a homing missile and was about short enough to be stuffed into one of the missile pods. I sighed to myself. Might still need to do that.

"Nothing. Sat in your chair for a minute. Nice chair. The Ball's going to be laying some charges, that's all. You want your briefing now or up there?"

I hooked a thumb over my shoulder toward the open boarding ramp. The number of people around the shuttle was down to just two, making final adjustments to the proximity charge dropper.

"Give it to me in the chair."

She said, trotting over toward the ramp, then paused for a moment before smacking herself in the forehead hard enough that I winced at the noise alone.

"...Jesus Christ, just caught that, I've been hanging around Tawny too much. Sorry."

Ignoring Jenny's malicious chuckle, I stretched my legs to keep up with her speed, following her up the ramp and right into the copilot's chair. She flicked a switch once she'd thrown herself into the pilot's seat with a familarily practiced motion and I could hear the ramp hiss up and finally clunk shut, a rather disconcertingly firm noise.

"So. Rescue mission, eh? What the hell are we really off to do?"

She had a disconcerting way of staring at me. Something about the way she was buckling herself in and preparing for preflight checks without ever taking her eyes off the bridge of my nose. She was ex-military, she knew the drill. I didn't have to hold back too much that was relevant, so I shrugged and more or less levelled with her.

"Fast recon. Send a missile in, traverse the known corridors looking for human life signs. You escort me, we fake an emergency in flight, I go in hot and clear your way to any hostages, you go in behind and mine any cross-approaches. I guard you while you get the hostages back out, you come back up to Shiva at max safe speed to get them medical care and to get you the hell out, and we'll be taking another way out. Don't go back and don't stop and don't be watching on any rearward monitors, I can't tell you more than that. Needless to say this isn't something that needs to get out...but we've got a few more places to repeat the op."

Hannah looked away then, watching a readout as she did something that made the shuttle rattle a little then start humming. She nodded curtly.

"Just passing through, eh? Tawny seems to think you'll be coming back here for an extended period. Possibly with her. I had a feeling she wasn't your type."

I shook my head, duplicating her procedure on the copilot's side to start the other engine. It was simple enough and she gave me an approving look as the other dial swung into the green as well.

"She's not my type. But I know somebody dirt-side who is. Seems fair enough. Ideally you won't have to do any blasting, but if there's a chance wait for my cue and details. I've got a bit more than your standard security cap guns. You got any first-aid training?"

"Nah. Here, you can do a diagnostic run on the lasers, standard controls, while I check avionics. You think there's gonna be a lot of them that are in iffy shape?"

My fingers flew over the unfamiliar panel, occasionally pausing to let Jenny murmur the next control in the sequence. I knew she'd looked up the layout to rectify her earlier misjudgement and that if needed she could probably fly it herself NOW. I wasn't optimistic there'd be hostages at all, that implied a certain level of foresight on the part of the robots. All we knew was that they didn't like being shot at.

"For all I know, we may have to pick them up by ones and twos all over the damn mine if they haven't congregated. I don't know if the hostiles have collected them at all. I don't know if there's anybody alive down there anywhere. You might have to gas them to keep them calm. I don't know at this point, never got a list of effectives in these facilities and it doesn't much matter. Anybody that's not alive that's not picked up by the missile sensors will just have to go down in history as missing. We'll hit the outpost first, you'd mentioned your partner running the defenses."

Hannah paused mid-control wiggle and nodded before getting back to her mental checklist.

"Yeah, but I've pretty much resigned myself to her being messily dead. Anything more will be a nice surprise, even if it's just seeing the body. So you can spare me the pep talk about if I step out of line you'll put a missile through the cockpit and all that rah rah macho bullshit. I'll be a good evac pilot because it's about all that's left that I can do to help."

Jenny made an exasperated sound and sighed. So did I.

"If I thought you were going to be a problem I would've had an admin shuttle readied instead. Comms on channel 17, tell me when you're ready."

I was up and out of the chair again before she had a real chance to respond. She turned her head back toward me as I left the cockpit and for a moment I thought she was going to apologize.

"And close that door behind you on your way out!"

She was going to be a handful, but better with us than against us.


	11. Sheer Lunarcy

Chapter 11: Sheer Lunarcy

"I'm soaring, free falling, with all emotions roaring

Like lightning, like thunder, I'll rip the world asunder"

--Judas Priest

_I'd been looking over the outpost plans. Located on the dark side of the moon, not a lot of real science happened there any more and the place was reduced to a skeleton crew. An engineer or two to keep life support and their little work pods running, a resident grad student or two doing internships by looking after the sensor packages and lab experiments that scientists would send up for installation from time to time, and one person in charge of security. Maybe four, five people down there. It was even remote enough not to have a colony springing up around the outpost entrance, the small population living inside the facility. Easy enough. In theory. I was still trying to shake off the want to hurt and maim, but just thinking of all the robots we hadn't destroyed trying to evacuate when the reactor started melting down around them--and being speared with munitions if they made it to the surface--gave me enough reason to smile._

_Soon enough I felt Jerome settle into my cockpit again, like a warm hug, and I wasted no time shutting the cockpit and projecting myself atop the two main monitors, shaking a teasing finger at him as he carefully put on and fastened his helmet._

_"What, no kiss goodbye to your biggest supporter here?"_

"The only thing I want to kiss is this place goodbye. I suppose you're somewhere on the list too, below 'wasp' and above 'wet paint'."

_"What happened to being fastidious? Did you lick yourself once and decide you'd already permanently soiled your lips by it?"_

_The bolsters were inflated and we were ready to go. I flexed my muscles and stretched one way and another. I still felt limber, which meant everything was responding right, but it never hurt to make sure. Unbidden, I spun the vulcan barrels once, loading every one with a slug of depleted uranium. A trickle of power to the lasers, not to the excitation level, but enough to check for continuity...all the missiles icons in Jerome's projected display winked from safed green to a more reassuring armed red._

"You're accusing yourself of having bad taste by that same metric, you know."

_"Since when did I ever taste bad? Hah, I know I have bad taste, look at who I decided to fall for and what it got me. And you won't let me go on a single rampage."_

_I draped my projected image in his display across the bottom of the field of view in a 1930s-style cheesecake pose, pouting and blowing him a kiss. For grins I projected an even tinier city lying in ruins beneath my figure like I'd just got done trampling it._

"It might still happen if we have to go that deep into the pods. Besides, what do you call ripping the M out of PTMC? A Sunday jaunt? Gimme a reticle."

_Across the bay I could see the Hamster Ball's control surfaces wiggling. Not that we'd be dealing with atmospheric flight except to get out of the hangar, but neverthless, a full preflight was just that. The last two technicians were dragging a skid of testing equipment and the empty packaging of the minedropper away from the back of the shuttle and it looked like Hannah was just a little behind our run-up, despite her head start. I took next to no time to get ready and always looked good. With a grin I had my little image reach down her cleavage--adjusted to be more impressive than my slight breasts had ever managed--and throw a green reticle upward into his field of view. He glanced left, right, up and down--and I could feel the tug on my fingers in response. I could sense the optics shifting minutely in their mounting too, and the swivel of the turret, but that wasn't nearly as natural._

_"Give me a distance check too, I want to see the harmonization status."_

_I could of course do it all independently--something he didn't see or didn't aim at, I could shoot to bits anyway--he had no absolute overrides over me by our mutual plan--but we worked best as a team. Unless I had a good reason or we needed really exceptional precision, he'd just see something he wanted to shoot, fire the appropriate amount of ordinance, and I'd make sure it arrived on target if his glance was off, harmonized as needed. I felt the laser cannon muzzles pivot toward each other a few degrees then back out again as he stared at something across the hangar, then right under the nose. Unurged, my fingers spread apart and contracted. Looked fine from here. _

_"QX. Attitude check!"_

_He knew the silly little drill quite well._

"We're fucked!"

_"Positive attitude check?"_

"We're positively fucked!"

_Occasionally it was a pitch check, which was singing in harmony._

"_Negative attitude check?"_

"Fuckit!"

_Or a yaw check, which was a back and forth exchange of Texas-speak._

_"Sounds appropriately despairing. Right. We're good. Incoming transmission from Hannah."_

"Hamster Ball to II-JNY-02, what's taking you so long over there, Mister Whiskers?"

_I could see Jerome's grin curl upward so far his teeth were showing. Oh, this ought to be fun._

"Go ahead, dear, if she wants to be informal let's have some fun."

_The words I'd been aching to hear. I filtered my reply to his helmet as well. Damned if I was going to use my tail number or MD-1032 as a callsign. Time to break out the name of our company, taking the old Institute nickname from my blue hair and his slate eyes and putting it to good use._

_"Uncivil War to Rodent Nuts, just waiting for you to test every single switch. Be a good little escort ship and we'll do our best to not embarrass you in front of your gerbil friends here, over. Insertion trajectory follows."_

_I sent a slug of data over the channel, the path that would give us the best line in. I didn't get to talk to people often as anything other than a phantom secretary. It was kind of fun. A quick glance around, no obstacles. Jerome twitched his fingers at me and I leapt into the air, hovering halfway to the roof of the huge room on balanced thrust alone. He couldn't hold it like that, too many precision adjustments, but I sure as hell could and a little showing off didn't hurt._

"Ball copies, Uncivilized, once you shoot your load I'll take you into custody and down per flight plan. Commencing initial exfil. Try not to get lost."

_She sounded amused as the Ball rose on a pillar of pale blue hydrogen flame and wobbled its way out of the bay, accelerating quickly back into her former patrol pattern. Jerome had no idea what was going on, but he was watching intently with a faint grin still. He always looked forward to __**my**__ surprises, even if he didn't necessarily like them._

_"Hang on, this may be a little rough. Ordinance and manuevering on me."_

_He nodded and tensed up. I ignored his control inputs then and concentrated for a moment. It would be tricky. A leap forward, fans suddenly at full power, and a twist and somersault just so....I could hear him grunt as the thrusters spiked me end-over-end and nearly upside down, still facing forward, as I shot across the field and into space. Quicker than thought, as the vectors and paths lined up, I punched forward with one hand and jerked my wrist muscles with the other. One of our scarce guided missiles came to life in the pod and hurtled out into the blackness, accelerating hard and looking like it was aimed at nothing in particular. Its trajectory would bring it back and around and down into lunar orbit, going low-altitude near the mountains where the science outpost was and only diving into it from a shallow angle opposite the one we'd be approaching from. I could feel the power surge as I cut the fans and activated all Vulcan firing circuits...every barrel spat its deadly slug in unison down toward the horizon, still not at the mine but--coincidentally--aimed such that gravity plus velocity would bend them down to impact the outpost's communication dish in just a few seconds. Dravis had claimed that they'd not been communicating but I wasn't taking chances. With any luck, it would appear to observers that the shock of crossing the air barrier in a show-offy move had caused the pilot's finger to accidentally discharge ordinance._

_We tumbled through space with the residual velocity and spin while I started up the bubble and slowly began to stablize our orientation. Slow--easy on the fuel--and in small increments, the way a miner would. Right on cue, the Hamster Ball came shooting back around the curve of the station, squawking on the public channels._

"PTMC Security to unidentified ship, you are in violation of ordinance laws, we observe multiple discharges, shut off all mining and defensive devices immediately and proceed to lunar surface for detention and formal charges to be filed---noncompliance will be met with lethal force."

_She made it sound impressive, and the lasers were hot and keeping us in their sights. Not that those lasers would do much more than melt a bit of the surface of my armor unless she could keep us in her sights for a lot longer than I suspected was physically possible, but it sure sounded good. Jerome nodded to me and I let him answer._

"Uh, MV0001734 to PTMC Security, I stuffed the takeoff pretty good, swear I didn't mean to fire...just the impact shock. Can you cut me a break?"

_That was Thomas's old registry number for the mining ship he used to fly. It was a GOOD way to start off. I went ahead and cut power to the Vulcan after another spin for cooling and for loading all barrels and pulled the hatch to the missile pod closed._

"Negative, MV0001734, telemetry shows possible impact. This is an enhanced security zone, you are violating flight restrictions, and I am cutting you a break by not immediately shooting you for suspected terrorist activity. Proceed under escort for IMMEDIATE landing. Out."

_The Ball flew close enough above us that I could feel the sting of the peroxide maneuvering propellant on my armor. Maybe it'd clean away some of the carbon blacking atmosphere descents tended to accumulate. So far so good. With the ship now stable, I let Jerome suggest a course correction to match the shuttle. I adjusted for his relatively clumsy inputs for direction, shaping the bubble to let us drift alongside the Ball on its way down while I let the reactor run at full power for a while to refill the particles that had been ablated away by that maneuvering jet._

_No telemetry from the missile just yet. Patience. Patience. I quivered with suppressed eagerness to go hunting, and I could even pick up subconscious toe-tapping from Jerome. We were getting closer and closer toward the surface, Hannah on a course that would take her past the outpost on the way toward the nearest lunar colony. Any second now. Wait for it...the missile should be entering the outpost in just a few seconds. I shot "GO" to the shuttle on the private channel and was immediately rewarded by what looked pretty convincingly like a thruster nozzle blowing out. Looked like she'd slammed it shut before touching off an atmosphere-only propellant mix, then irised it open again so it blew the control mechanism right out the aperture in an impressive fireball but otherwise did no damage. _

"PTMC security to station LN-001 and MV0001734, negative flight controls, thruster malfunction... Declaring in-flight emergency, will attempt landing at PTMC outpost OS-001. MV, follow me in, do not attempt breakaway or deadly force will be used."

_The Hamster Ball was going in hot. Jerome frowned but played along, matching course and accelerating. I felt a laser suddenly paint my skin and start modulating frantically...it was the downlink station the guided missile had fired into the rock at the entrance to the outpost, making contact where I'd told it I would be. The missile had a link to the downlink station and I shot the message laser back to the station, receiving the results of the flythrough as quickly as they were transmitted. The way Hannah was bringing the shuttle in was dramatic, lots of wasted propellant billowing out in clouds, it looked like frantic attempts to slow her previously rapid descent but accomplished little other than keeping the same descent speed and rotating for a better touchdown. I tilted to the side a little to get more distance from the volatile ice crystals, didn't want to get a fireball inside the shield bubble. The first bit of good news--the comm dish was trashed, I'd done one better than fry the antenna can at the focus point, the slugs had smashed through that and severed the spindly arms holding its framework to the motors. Not only was it ruined on the rocks but it was also completely removed from anything that could tilt the wreckage back into place. I decided I'd take credit for the positive result, and flashed a slightly-blurry still image of it up on Jerome's vision, a brief flash of my hand alongside in a thumbs-up gesture before letting him see the outside again._

"PTMC security shuttle Hamster Ball to Outpost OS-001, requesting emergency personnel for potential crash landing. Please respond."

_I had the feeling Hannah was enjoying playing her part to the hilt. Wasn't often you got to squawk panic on official channels. Tawny was on another official channel asking Hannah what her likely return time would be and if she needed an admin shuttle scrambled to assist, Hannah blew her off to focus on landing. They were both playing along so well that it was giving me bigger ideas for a master plan for escorts on later missions, but it wouldn't play well with the military._

_"Aha! Look, here they are..."_

_I took over the long glide down, filling his display with a quick wireframe snapshot of the mine and blinking dots to represent the mine personnel located. It wasn't good. There were only two dots. Maybe that was within acceptable parameters...one scientist, one engineer? One student, one security? I couldn't pull any information from Shiva about current assignments, it was probably buried in so many layers of irrelevance that nobody knew what it was even filed under any more. I could see Jerome's feral grin now as his hands tightened around the sticks._

"Open wide, here comes the surgeon...."

_He whispered. Beneath us, the rugged lunar surface was looming fast now and I could see the outpost entrance, a darkened naked tunnel into the rock that I brought our nose around to point straight at. The telemetry stopped, the last view being the missile's running into a sheer rock wall and shattering, and I could hear a roar of interference across all communication channels as Hannah jammed her throttles to the stops, maximum thrust blasting divots out of the dusty plain and beginning to lift the ship from her touch-and-go, but there was no time to wait for her. Jerome's eyes were slitted in concentration, my bubble was at full shielding effect, all pods were open, lasers hot,the Vulcan loaded and ready... And with Hannah just behind us, we shot into the uncertain mouth of Hell itself. Time to punch the clock._

_TO BE CONTINUED?_


	12. Open Up and Say Ow

Chapter 12: Open Up and Say Ow

"Once you've decided, don't delay. The best is the enemy of the good... a good plan violently executed **now** is better than a perfect plan next week." - General George S Patton

Aside from a few choice words on the way in I'd been playing the good little passenger while Jenny handled the approach and excuse. No longer, it was time I earned my keep-nevermind that I was slower, having to act within the petty confines of actual flesh, nerves, and muscles. That was merely a bothersome detail. As the entry tunnel snaked past, a grey blur in my tunnel vision, we flashed past two giant sets of opened doors. Not good for an entry airlock to ever be open like that-it tugged at my Lunar-born sensibilities. The place was open to vacuum, which meant the safeties were offline. Air maneuvering was a gigantic pain in a tunnel fight but it was a long sight better than relying on that fragile lethal bubble for protection and navigation. I found myself halfway hoping that the entire place would be either aired or evacuated, as the thought of the transitions didn't sound like fun at all, but then it was past time for thought. The second set of doors abruptly opened into a large room, hewn out of the naked moon rock and with exquisitely straight and polished walls. The place must've been three stories tall, easy, with a big circular desk on the floor and a big ring of projection screens hanging down from the ceiling. Not a bad reception area, really. Probably wouldn't be nearly as nice inside, away from where visitors occasionally were expected. A red-striped door to the top left was big enough to pass a good-sized ship and all sorts of warning signs festooned the ramp winding up to it. The ramp down from the entryway wasn't very useful, not airborne and at our speed. Two exits were on the first floor, one to the left and one to the right, and I could see an overlaid blue exclamation point on the tunnel to the right. I still hadn't been able to look at the map for myself beyond a brief glance on the way down-enough to see that the place wound around like spaghetti, old mining tunnels following no particular pattern and overlapping with sciencey stuff more recently installed-but that could sure as hell wait. My attention was fixed straight ahead at the orange mining drone rapidly filling the front view, hovering in the middle of the room with its little thrusters puffing away like some sort of demented receptionist.

The little plasma melter sounded as startled as I was, judging from the start of an electronic shriek that burst forth from my helmet speakers-Jenny must be listening for broadcasts and interpreting them-before I mashed the Vulcan trigger with my left forefinger, holding it down. Was there time for a burst long enough to take that thing out before we were past? The same motion became a convulsive twitch to jerk the controls down and right with right hand and both feet. We were far too close for missiles and while there was space to dogfight if need be there was also a shuttle coming in hot on my six and speed was life. I could feel our forward motion jerk slower for a second, then again with the briefest of pauses in between and there was a sound like a double sonic boom that I could feel and hear through the hull. All the Vulcan barrels fired at once and a second time for good measure while the nose was pointed that way. The growing orange glow on the nose of the drone vanished, the emitter and the bulk of its fuselage smashed into sparkling shrapnel by the twin bursts of slugs that slammed through them and buried their dense metal through the ornate PTMC banner and into the rock wall behind it. I caught a glimpse of the pontoons out to either side of the spindly little frame slowly pinwheeling away to either side in the low Lunar gravity before we were past and down. I could distantly hear Jenny hoot, nevermind that the helmet speakers were directly over my ears, but mostly all I heard was the thunder of my own heartbeat. The tile-lined corridor stretched ahead with a vertical gaping hole in the floor no doubt down to one sensor platform or another on another sublevel but all I had eyes for was the miniscule steady brightness pulse of the green X in the center of the reticle that marked the Vulcan's ready status. Jenny had made the call for more firepower, and it had worked, and that was good enough. Incongruously, the thought flashed through my mind that we'd never built a weapon mix for high-speed close-quarters jousting but now we had one. Nothing quite like practice on the fly in your most deadly assignment to prompt resourcefulness-I'd have to mention it later.

A blue arrow flashed on an opening to the right in the corridor a short distance ahead, another set of doors jammed open, and I had only a fraction of a second to decide how to handle threats from down the corridor directed at our side if we were pointing into the doorway. Hannah and the Ball weren't in sight yet but they couldn't be far behind. Well, you relied on people to do their job, and if they weren't there Jenny would've said something...a mental shrug and I applied the proper foot pressure to bring the nose around. Jenny let the forward motion scrub away as she rotated, then applied forward thrust. The threat to our side vanished once we were in the smaller antechamber, what looked like a decontamination step-through area lined with spray nozzles and racks to hang environmental suits and lockers on either side. There was barely clearance between the wingtips and lockers...And the inner doors were closed. A huge fist slammed me back into the chair as Jenny did whatever she had to do to bring us to a stop fast enough to avoid running into them. You didn't want to vent air to vacuum if you didn't have to, especially not by ramming the partition with a fiendishly complicated bit of machinery in hostile territory. That sort of thing was ruinous for the bubble, bad for the armor, lousy for the spaceframe, and-if the survivors weren't suited up-potentially crippling or fatal for the folks we were supposed to be rescuing. And that was ruinous for the mission. For the moment, it was just bad for me keeping my breath. I could _hear_ something creak through the bones of the ship and Jenny's oof was just as loud as mine. The shield strength indicator was down to half strength suddenly-she'd probably had to ram the bubble outward against the ceiling, floor, and the doors ahead to get us stopped in time, transferring all the force to the shield generator but we were stopped and the mounts could withstand a lot more stress loading than that.

Some freak of the shield particle dissipation against all the walls activated several systems in the decon room and we found ourselves drifting in a slowly descending mist of ice and chemical crystals, what would have been a proper misting instantly frozen on exposure to the vacuum. An oval shape around the hull was clear in my forward vision, the bubble keeping the particles out but at a ruinous cost in shield integrity. The view of our six showed the Hamster Ball flying past backwards, mine-droppers leading the way, to block the corridor past where we'd turned off but there wasn't time for relief.

_"OOOOPEN!"_

I could hear Jenny scream at the inner door. The particles were killing our shields, the indicator already down to less than a quarter of full strength , and if it wouldn't open via computer overrides then it was about time to carve a laser hole through the thing-or, to try and get back our speed, swiss-cheese it with Vulcan rounds and simply smash through. I pulled back on the stick, bringing the nose up and around slowly in preparation for doing a little metalwork when the doors suddenly shot open and spat a rush of debris, crystallized moisture from suddenly escaping air, and a blue-hulled robot straight at us.

Well, that answered one question-yes, there used to be pressure in there, and it was all escaping. I had just enough time to notice that the shields were now blinking between one percent and zero. There went our vacuum maneuvering capacity. There went what was keeping us from falling. There went the power bar, blinking an eye-catching red at the bottom of the display. One hundred twenty-five percent of rated continuous capacity, full design limit power, and pegged there. Generator running flat out in this hostile environment even as the shield particles decayed at the instant of their creation, we had barely enough to slow our fall, and we'd already drifted perilously far toward a skid-landing when the tumbling cutting platform smashed into the nose of the ship with a musical bong like being inside a church bell.

Multiple axis rotation, no lift, no thrust, no air, hostile already firing off its thrusters to recover and get back into a firing position, gravity impending. Well, no plan survived contact with the enemy, that was why they were called the enemy. We drifted back and down, still rotating from the initial impulse as well. There were no good answers-all the missile pods were already facing more or less the ceiling, the laser muzzles were too far upward and sideways to be beam-bent on target-and I didn't want to rob the bubble generator of power until and unless we touched down-so that left the Vulcan again. It was far enough under the nose to still be aimable at the thing. I could only see the ceiling through the front view, nozzles still trying to wash all the dust and grime off a clean ship, but I had to trust Jenny to aim without explicit direction. My finger clamped across the trigger and the ship began to shake with the multi-barrel discharges. Three tremors rocked me before the gun ceased firing and a sharper shock jolted me forward against the bolsters. Outside was level again and I could see the still-open door. The cutting platform was defunct and had come to rest just inside the tracks. A smear of blue paint and shiny metal marked where it had bounced off the ceiling violently enough to sever a few of the nozzles and ricochet back down to the floor. Half of one pontoon was missing and the followup bursts had chewed most of the center hull away. Evaporating coolant and propellant clouds billowed up from it, but we were in one piece-if on the ground. At least she'd dropped the skids and we didn't hit on the underbelly-or worse, the movable engine cowlings!

_"Hold one."_

Jenny snapped. She sounded pissed. The power bar winked out and in its place a new graphic came up in the bottom of my helmet display-cartoon engines with a flame behind them, the entire picture starting off solid blue and quickly fading toward transparency. We pogoed up a few feet, tilting forward to slip through the still-open door. That tank of hydrogen peroxide was our emergency afterburner propellant in atmosphere, sure. Did great things when you sprayed it on the heat exchangers-instant breakdown into superheated steam and oxygen. Well, when they were superheating intake air already, you tended to get a great deal of flame and a pretty good kick in the ass-right up until something melted or exploded. In a pinch, usually the airless sort, the superheated steam and oxygen made for adequate thrust by itself, and that's what she had to do to get us moving again but steam wasn't gonna keep us up for long.

Without further drama the door slammed shut behind us-neatly severing the platform's remains-and Jenny brought the fans up to speed in a hurry as the pressure began to restore itself. The graphic winked out as we sagged mid-air, proper fan lift picking up quickly. We hung in the air once more, facing the back of the room, downdraft from the ductwork fitfully stirring the wreckage of the cutting platform. I wished I knew what PTMC used for coolant and propellant but on the scale of importance a few toxins in the air weren't the biggest thing the survivors had to worry about. Still, we couldn't stay here for long like this, it was going to make the air in the room far too hot for habitation. Hell, bringing the Hamster Ball in here was going to be enough of a problem-she'd have to run her thrusters without the usual fuel mixed in and that superheated steam was still no joke in a relatively small space. The floor was going to get damn hot before Hannah could land the thing and embark whoever was left. Wherever they even were in here...

"Nice save. Damage?"

_"Bruise. Counts as a _great_ landing. Pay attention."_

The old joke-any landing you walked away from was a good landing, any landing where the plane would still fly afterward was a _great_ landing. Jenny flung two giant blinking stick figures onto my display, overlaid on what looked like several tables and some assorted junk welded to the wall. No...looking closer I could see that it was a doorframe that served as a attachment point. I squinted and in response she threw up a quick enlargement of a weld section. Nothing human made that straight of a line-was it that cutting platform that had welded those tables and various scraps into place? It sure looked like something had melted the pieces into each other along a more general area than a laser would. The little splashes of resolidified metal around the slight craters that marked the join of the table to the other bits of furniture were a dead giveaway-plasma ball. That meant one of those...orange...things. Whatever Dravis had called them faded from memory. It wasn't important-but had we waxed the receptionist drone responsible or was there another one around here? I knew we had to at least clear the living area before I could risk bringing in the Ball. Every second spent meant one less second of surprise.

"Map!"

I snapped, brusque in the moment of need.

"Only this pressure-tight area, how much do we clear? Tell Hannah to stand by in the niche outside."

There was the briefest of hesitations and the nose came around to cover the opening to the left. We stayed behind the wall and Jenny flung up a map in my bottom right field of view, heavy blue lines delineating where we were and the life signs.

_"EM sources tagged! Ball reports all approaches secured, no contacts. Pool left from left cafe, refueling station right from left cafe, no exits."_

A little hamster icon blinked just outside the map, positioned by our entry hatch. Two red question marks pulsed just around the corner, with another one in what Jenny had tagged as the pool area. Well, at least there was a little bit of warning if these were bogies. That ramming incident had made me rethink the wisdom of releasing our gun camera footage after all. Nevertheless, I coaxed the Pyro in a sideways slide into the entrance to the cafe. The first thing that leaped out at me were the two gigantic fans at the back of the room, serving ventilation duty for the entire area as well as for the kitchen that sprawled underneath them along and out from the back wall. Evidently PTMC's transition from mine to science outpost had neglected to refit the facilities because everything this far had certainly been built for a working crew of probably closer to a hundred people than a measly five. I wasn't at all happy about the tables and chairs dotting the floor in their preordained grid pattern save for a few that had been ripped up and used for blockading the barracks. All I could think about was sucking an aluminum chair into Jenny's fans if the furniture hadn't been properly bolted to the floor, at least until the red carets sprang to life around a pair of blue cutting platforms hovering at the back of the room just above the stove. Had PTMC really run the induction rails through the living quarters?

One of them was close enough to the leftmost fan that I took the chance on holding down the Vulcan trigger-I'd try lasers on some other test subject and I knew Vulcan rounds worked-while thumbing the missile release. A homing missile shot across the gap separating the platforms and us-my stick hand slewing Jenny leftward across the room-as a fine coating of dust shook from the cockpit interior to the relentless vibrating snarl of the Vulcan. Evidently Jenny had switched back to the steady-fire default, either for testing purposes or because she knew what I was trying to do. The fire streak became a smoke streak became a brief dusty flower of flame and the leftmost platform was simply gone. Shrapnel littered the back rock of the wall and underneath where the blue devil had hung the chairs and tables were wilted and melted into strange shapes. The right platform was still in one piece as I glanced to it, the Vulcan slugs pounding it relentlessly backward but not having bored through its thick frontal armor. I had a moment to reflect how lucky I'd gotten with the double-tap on the orange pest before what I'd hoped for happened. Iron ore was cheap on the moon. The cheapest thing you could get. PTMC was notoriously cheap, and I'd been hoping they'd followed the familiar pattern of equipping all colonies and mines with solid iron ventilation fans. The weight made for great inertia in case of power troubles or fluctuations. It also made for one of the dangers you learned early-on as a child-don't expect to get back intact anything you put in there. Including cutting platforms.

With a crash I could hear even through the soundproofing of the cockpit a hooked-edge blade swung down on the platform with the inevitability of tax season and sheared it in half without the fan slowing in the slightest. Toppling gracelessly, the front half, attached half-pods and all-spit sparks until a long electrical arc crawled its way between hull and pod, then pod to pod, then with an actinic flash it blew itself apart. By comparison to the missile, the explosion was a bit disappointing and didn't do much more than drunkenly tilt a chair or two. Nevertheless, the kid in me had to rejoice at that. You heard whispered stories about chopped up bodies but never really saw anything...until now.

"Meet your biggest fan, fucker!"

I crowed joyfully, mingling with Jenny's war-whoop.

_"Caught an unlucky break! Unidentified contact left, fuzzy signature right, could be from the facility. I'll take the shot left."_

Who was I to argue? I uncurled my fingers from the left arnament stick and spared a nod, advancing forward. Halfway across the dining area I turned the nose left to face the wall-that shrapnel would be all too easy in Lunar G to suck through the turbines and this would keep the inlets away. It was the little things...and when we slid into the next passageway I could see the pool at the far end. It'd probably started off life as some detector basin or another, who knew? There were doors for changing rooms or bathrooms or something off the tiled corridor but I wasn't getting in there unless I was on foot-and nobody was in there. The general rule of thumb was that if it was too small for Jenny, it was too small for most of these robots. The 'most' part was a bit worrisome, but she'd only flung up the one blip...I kept my attention split between the shield readout, still at a distressing zero since we were in an atmosphere, and the rear display. Last thing we needed was a heat-seeker, that hot ass was almost impossible to hide. Sure enough, advancing down the corridor at a fast walking pace the source of the odd EM radiation became clear-it was an orange plasma drone hovering above a spacious pool that filled almost all of the circular room.

As I saw it, the problem was the three bodies floating in the pool. They drifted gently, arms and legs akimbo. Except there weren't the appropriate quantity of limbs. Not on the bodies, at least, although I was sure if you counted up the various floating ones too you'd be closer. The drone hovered just above them with its thrusters puffing a steady propellant haze downward into the pool, steady steam flow turning the water to steam slowly as well. It balanced on its nose so its faintly glowing plasma emitter was nearly touching the corpses. Jenny drifted to a halt when it became obvious the drone hadn't spotted us.

_"Temps way elevated...looks like peroxide thrusters too...lots of organic compounds in the pool already. Like human soup. What's it doing so far from an induction rail? There's nothing even running down this way from the cafe."_

She said softly, studying sensors I had no immediate access to, her tone a mix between disgust and professional curiosity.

_"...is it trying to cook them or dissect them? There's a weird modulation I'm picking up, almost like a data transmission. Broad-spectrum, like a beacon but I can't match it to known signal patterns. Yet. Taking the shot."_

Without any input from me a deep buzzing hum filled my ears and bones as the lasers came on for a mere half second. She'd taken the liberty of zooming my display in to her precise aim point and turning off all enhancements so all I saw was a bright sparkle from both pylons, metal flash-heated to liquid and then gas, as the two outriggers were neatly sliced off and four small holes appeared in the rock past the convergence point she'd set. The entire drone fell into the pool with a small splash, taking one of the corpses to the bottom underneath its mass. Nothing further happened for a few seconds and I kept my fingers on the triggers just in case until Jenny sighed.

_"OK. They can't swim. That's two signatures tagged and positive ID on those three. We'll dump to Shiva and the processing station on exfil, find out who they were. Almost clear...whoa!"_

I spun the ship around as she spoke but couldn't see anything of immediate interest.

_"Getting a huge EM spike. Ow. That refueling facility must have some kind of inductive rig that just powered up. I can't see shit now , not even the Ball."_

Better and better. Time for a little recon by fire, and quite possibly an unprofessional degree of revenge.

_"Pylons are weak. I'm seeing a lot of modular pod-based designs in the data I pulled from Shiva , which is good news. Bad news is that they're pretty well armored against normal Vulcan impacts. There's data here on a rocksmasher design that pulverizes ore for removal via explosive mass driver impacts-looks like the standard design is resistant to accidentally crossing firepaths. Industrial lasers are ineffective without sustained exposure. Mil-spec works OK on these old leftovers so far."_

We moved forward under a steady pressure on the stick, through the cafe once more. Moving closer to the other hallway I could see the faded warning sign cautioning of extreme voltage danger hung directly across the circular corridor that extended both ways from the entry point. The little part about no human entry unless there was a lockout/tagout procedure in place struck me as amusing, given that I was about to fly in there in a gigantic chunk of metal when I could already see solid blue ropes of electricity arcing from the recharging probes covering the ceiling to the induction rails on the walls. Was the entire ring running at full power with no connections active? Whatever else it was doing, it made for a damn effective sensor and communication whiteout.

"Um."

_"C'mon, you cat-ape, you wanna live forever? Stay low, I can shrug off a few hits. Can't send in a missile, too tight a bend. I'll turn on the skin-burner system and undervolt it so we'll bleed the extra off into the capacitor banks, just make it quick."_

Nuts to that.

"Better idea."

Tipping the nose back a bit and bringing the reticle over the first few connectors I could see to the right, I tightened my finger on the laser trigger, humming along with the military weapons this time. Jenny overlaid a helpful visual enhancement-I could see four white rods of light connect the row of recharging probes to the wing root muzzles. Metal liquified and dripped and blew apart as I gently leaned on the rudder pedals to sweep the nose across what of the ceiling tracks I could reach from the entryway. Let up on the trigger. Kept the nose in motion to do the other side. That was when I saw a glimpse of something big and green shooting around the curve. It was hovering along the rail like the drones were supposed to do, but the sudden splash of green light on the nose, the red light in my vision, and the return of the hum were all part of the same instant. Either I or Jenny punted us sideways while firing to get out of the hostile laser range, but she was the one who salvoed off two homing missiles from opposite pods. Anything that didn't go down in the first few seconds of laser fire demanded stronger stuff, and the missiles didn't disappoint. The green glow slid off to the side while the hulking thing was trying to reaim itself with its dinky little thrusters and after the brief violent fire cloud that hid the drone had faded to thick smoke all I could see was shrapnel embedded into the walls, ceiling, and floor and a chunk of green-painted metal on the floor. There wasn't a lot left of the drone or the half of the charging ring it had so unexpectedly popped out of and the arcing had decisively stopped.

_"Bandit down! EM spectrum clear. Two armor panels mostly fucked. Blow that door and get Hamster in!"_

Fighting in tight quarters like this was tantamount to suicide. Split-second engagements, split-second kills, the guy who got off the first shot usually was the one left standing. And we were up against machines. A cold rush swept over my body. That one had been a lot closer than they usually got-it'd hit pretty solidly with both lasers and with that kind of penetration if I/we hadn't acted that quickly to return fire decisively and move we'd probably be the shot-to-shit one. Three missiles down, two plates gone, a couple hundred Vulcan rounds expended-still, we'd gotten 5 kills out of it. I shook my head. We were going to need to do a lot better than this-still, we were drone aces and that should count for something. Not bad for less than two minutes of insertion time.

"Take the cutting and the comms-I want a map of the reactor pathway to the exit. Tag any weird EM blips orange, blue, green, or generic red and TELL me if there's going to be a problem with doors."

Jenny emitted a sour raspberry and I felt us move backwards and out, pivoting neatly once in the cafe's spaciousness and heading for the door. I was studying the map intently-no more damn surprises!


	13. Simplify, and Add Lasers

Chapter 13: Simplify, And Add Lasers.

"Run like hell and get the agony over with."

-Clarence DeMar

_I was doing too much at once, that much was clear. With two ugly scabs on my neck and ribcage-wounds just waiting to be torn open by injudicious speed or further fire-and a bruised nose, I was now responsible for calling Hamster in, cutting the hostages free, doing a long-range EM scan through a godawful lot of rock, and still trying to collate the transmissions I'd already intercepted together with overall observed patterns, to say nothing of frantically riffling through gigabytes worth of technical data on these damn things for something that might be of use. I knew more than I needed to by now about how they moved-induction motors to ride the multiple rails the original PTMC excavators put in by hand so the robots could get to the untouched rock and build new rooms and extend their own rail systems. Capacitive charging, usually including a charging facility inside a pressurized area. Exasperatedly I wrote zeroes to the entire storage area that held the records of lawsuits over PTMC running rails through living areas, complaints of burns and disrupted sleep deleted, records of procedural changes deleted. What did any of it matter? So the centers might not be in air in future mines, who gave a damn? Who needed to know that the hangtime of most drones on thrusters alone-repositioning to another rail or rotating orientation or just suspended to do drilling-was only about five minutes in a normal-G environment? Well, that might be of use. I filed it away and purged the rest of that part of the readout. Mostly I was interested in the thickness and types of armoring on these damn things. The melonballer was trivial to take out, responded to precision lasers and Vulcan bursts. I figured it'd go down like a little bitch under a sustained stream of normal Vulcan rounds but why waste the ammo to check? The cutting platforms, eh. Vulcan bursts worked but lasers would probably do the trick well enough. It needed to be tested. Another priority to add to the pile._

_Jerome was sitting there, leaning forward slightly against the bolsters unconsciously as he studied the twists and contours of the map. I had up what I could see of signatures through all the rock, and it looked pretty damn crowded in there...my estimates made it one baller, one platform, and maybe two of those green things. I echoed them to the display like a good girl and got busy cutting away the tables. It was tricky work-I had to bear in mind that somebody might be right behind the door and the beams were invisible to the naked eye. Angling upward so they cut a divot out of rock behind the door was easy enough, but the weird gyrations I had to go through took a bit of thought._

"Hell are those greenies for, anyway?"

_A good question. Were the double lasers just to make my life painful? I pulled up the data review of known mining robots and flicked through it looking for a similar shape, letting the autonomous systems I called my subconscious handle the cutting. We'd gotten lucky that the greenies seemed to have relatively small thrusters for their mass, suggesting they needed precision rather than speed. I got lucky and had a cross-section in a maintenance manual pop up with a matching view to what we'd seen. Problem was, the manual listed a whole crap-ton of models. Well, it was something._

_"Ore vein drilling-they spin axially and use those lasers to melt a plug out of the rock however deep they can get. Then something else comes in and breaks it up. Looks like they come in a couple varieties, including ones with dual shaped-charge warheads. And dual GUIDED warheads."_

_Nasty armor was thicker than mine-made sense but it was still vexing from a bogie standpoint. No wonder it'd taken more than one missile to take one out. I sighed to myself. These were scrap drones, cheaper to leave in the mine when it was converted to a scientific outpost than to transport out. Something must have reactivated them unless the meager staff here had kept them active for maintenance or transportation. And we'd be facing modern designs in the military station and from there on. Lovely. The only point of encouraging data seemed to be that big scanning sensor 'eye' across the top of the thing. Looked like some kind of rangefinger or radome for imaging a surface they were going to cut into-assuming the manual was accurate! A good cut into that or a few high-density Vulcan rounds ought to blind them enough for us to take them apart at our leisure-after all, how many redundant sensors could you cram in something built to a budget? Not many. Hopefully. I let my subconscious flip through the manuals and cross-correlate with the recorded briefing that seemed like so long ago. Next time I'd see one of these things I'd have a little more information. In the meantime it was time to get this done with a little more grace and speed-the automatic program was good but I was faster, smarter, and better-looking._

_A flex of the fingers, just so, a curve of the spine and a shimmy. I moonwalked backwards a bit-literally, to my own mind, although I doubted the boy would notice the rapid duct-shaped pulses-and let my extended peace-sign fingers each spit a rope of light toward the door. We didn't need full power for lousy furniture and I only had about as much harmonic deflection capacity as I could spread for that sign anyway. It got the job done faster and we might need that extra time. Concentrating on the cutting, I reflexively raised my voice to hail the shuttle holding position in the nook for a status update. The first table across the top of the doorway fell away forward and I kept slicing my merry way through the thin stuff. Metal droplets sparkled and flashed as they evaporated to gas or rained down (albeit slowly) as sparks, making for a satisfying pretty display from utilitarian purpose._

_"Two, friendly area cleared. Hold for entry-inner door code slug follows. Writing EM sigs of confirmed hostiles to your systems-pressurized in here, keep it that way."_

_I whistled a short melody, the one I'd caught when the decon cycle triggered the inner door and blown the surprised cutter our way. If I wanted I could've broken it down to the frequencies and data involved, but I echoed it as I'd heard it. Unless there was a need to switch my perceptions to the technical side I didn't bother. Getting her the EM tags of what we'd run into so far was easy enough if you knew the prefix codes to the shuttle. I noted that the same code was a standard PTMC security algorithm and filed it away for future reference. Her reply was gratifyingly prompt as I kept cutting away at the second table oh-so-carefully._

"Two copies door code. Transmitting tagged map."

_I fed the data into the map Jerome was poring over. It lit up with tagged hostiles, a truly obscene total. He swore once in an unsurprised fashion and went back to eyeballing our escape route. I was just as glad we hadn't gone mouse-hunting, it looked like the entire drone complement of an active mine was just sitting in wait. Seems like the Ball had sensors better adapted to this sort of work, not surprising. I'd have to see what I could tweak and tune to match that. At least there wasn't much historical movement between the time we'd entered and now. A tenuous network of mines blinked a reassuring blue across the major passageways but all I could think was that there weren't enough._

_As the second table toppled away and I flicked off the lasers I took a moment to get a good peek inside the room. Things were about what I'd expected of a converted barracks done by civvy eggheads. They'd evidently ripped out most of the bunk beds to turn the front part of it into some sort of communal area-lots of rugs, a couple holoscreens, foam insulation heavily coating several removed cafeteria chairs to make them more comfortable. Two liberated tables from the cafe, shoved together and neatly cut to make a circular shape, now held nothing but masses of papers and books, half-toppled, chairs strewn around the periphery. The cuts looked like something the cutting platforms had done-too neat for humans. That at least told me the drones had been active in the mine after it had been converted-might be useful, right now it was just clutter. Newspaper clippings and various personal items fluttered nervously on the walls and I could pick up two human shapes huddling against each other at the back of the room under the few beds that were left. No vacuum suits. Whoops. Well, they were still alive. _

_Seeing my schozz didn't seem to be helping much and I could detect their metabolic rates spiking, probably in terror. Perhaps I could have been a little more sloppy with the cutting to make it look human from the other side but this wasn't a PR-flack run. I took the liberty of giving Jerome a quick ass-squeeze with the bolsters to make him pay attention, then deflated all the restraints and popped the cockpit open. I'd probably regret the smell of burning metal and ozone and decontamination chemicals that would leave in the upholstry but fuckit, the boy had an independent air supply and I knew good fumigators. _

_"Stand up and wave, two terrified unarmed friendlies. No broadcasts, no intercom, too much risk."_

_We tended toward brevity in combat. You never knew who'd want a copy of the audio and video logs and while I could elide anything too embarassing or revealing out; the better quality you could deliver the better bonuses you could get. Between that, time pressures of action and long-standing cooperative habits we didn't find the need to be verbose unless we had the time for it. Jerome scowled at me but stood up and waved as requested. It did the trick, the two figures disentangled themselves from the pile of padding as soon as they saw a human-mostly-figure reveal itself from my hull, despite his facelessness in the helmet and jumpsuit. It beat the hell out of possibly homicidal robots but a great number of things shared that distinction._

"No risk _here_."

_He commented sarcastically, watching the two women stumble toward the doorway but pause as they approached my hovering bulk. The noise must've been pretty oppressive especially in a cramped space, as their hands were over their ears protectively. Well, at least they were mobile._

_"Tell 'em Hamster's coming as soon as I get my tiny little ass out of the way. This place could light up any moment."_

"One interpretive dance coming right up."

_Sardonic tone aside, he proved adept enough at conveying the message. One gloved hand out in the stop signal, palm toward them. Pointed to himself and me and off to the side. Held up the stop sign again. Damn him, he was sinking into that smooth jerkiness he always used when dancing. I could see it a mile away in the little wrist flourishes and more blatantly when he pivoted sideways on one foot and added a couple of snakey head-darts to the double wave he made indicating something was coming in from behind us. I didn't start snickering until the third repetition of that wave when he turned the finger-sweeping motion into a thumbs-up with one hand and flipped the other one pointing down to make a pair of walking legs, wiggling back toward the direction of the entryway._

_"I expect the rest of that dance when we get back. I'll beatbox."_

_Hold him to it with whatever it took, too. Work harder, play harder and I could hardly complain that I set a great example of _not_ thumbing my nose at danger. One of the women waved in acknowledgement, the other managing a thumbs-up in return and it wasn't without a sense of relief that I felt Jerome slide back down hastily to a seated position. I slammed the cockpit shut as fast as I could feed juice through the motors-well, not really or they'd have caught on fire-and ducked away from the doorway in a sidestep and twirl. The survivors would board under my watchful guns, not that they'd do much good but it was better than facing away from the entryway entirely. I cleared my throat and threw my voice out into the transmitter circuitry._

_"Two, numbers two mobile friendlies. C'mon in."_

_Now that I knew what to damn-well look for I was eying all those EM blips very carefully. It wasn't that there wasn't much historical movement, there was NO movement. The only blip that had changed position at all was the greenie that we'd surprised in the recharging station and from the readouts it had made a leisurely on the rails trip through the cleared area just as we were coming into the outpost. An op like this you expected everything to be on your tail after the first couple bogies going down in flames, but the various hostiles were just quietly maintaining position until they needed a recharge. Either there wasn't a communication net between drones any more or the downed ones hadn't had a chance to send out a maintenance-required signal or they flat just didn't care. One was a forlorn hope, one was the result of luck or bad PTMC priority programming, and one was entirely possible._

_You had to give Hamster credit, she knew how to get the most out of that security shuttle. As the door popped open into vacuum once more she backed the stubby-winged thing in with a skill I found myself impressed by. Wingtips scraped the rock walls and raised a shower of sparks but she used those in conjunction with her thrusters to bring the ship to a quick halt in front of the barracks and the door hadn't been open longer than the bare minimum needed. It hadn't even finished closing when she began cycle the rear hatch open and the ramp was already extending by the time she cut her thrusters and the shuttle rested on its skids on the smoking carpet._

"Just earned a beer. Mark five hostiles past that security door, you need any shots?"

_Jerome commented abstractedly, splitting his attention between the tactical map and Hamster's landing. One woman was half-supporting, half-carrying the other up the ramp. The other was limping and coughing into her arm across her face, but they both made it past the hatchway. I couldn't see too much more because the hatch was closing and the ramp retracting as fast as they'd go-not bad, but not great-and I was thinking about what he'd asked. There was something I wanted to try._

_"Lasers on the platform, don't take the first shot."_

_My love wasn't slow, I'd give him that-and everything more he could possibly need. He nodded assent._

"Rules of engagement-wise, we've been pretty jumpy."

_Maybe they only shot back when shot at. Or when escaping air pressure made them ram something and interpret it as an attack. Yeah, and maybe I folded balloon animals at children's parties. It was worth a shot, so to speak. Hannah lit off her thrusters and I actually jumped. With the hostages under control she wasn't wasting time or niceties on the evacuation-which meant full fuel mix. Sullen black smoke began to roil around the room as the tongues of flame blasted from the underside of the shuttle and brought it up into the air against lunar grav. Her technique needed a bit of work from the degree of wobble I could see, but to be fair it was damn hard to be stable with so little overhead clearance. The carpet was pretty solidly on fire and it was starting to spread into the barracks. Jerome winced to see it-you never wanted a fire in an oxygen-rich atmosphere-but when she opened the door again the outrush of atmosphere killed the flames fairly effectively._

"Two to One, on evac."

_Like it wasn't obvious. Hamster was out the door trailing flame and made the turn around the recessed entryway adroitly with more power than dexterity. I wouldn't've slid like that-she was trading a decent aimpoint for speed, but it was arguably justified._

"One copies. Best speed back."

_Jerome commented, taking the stick and slipping us through the still-open door. I closed it behind us if only to have less frozen oxygen in the proper vacuum of the tunnels outside, less interference with the shield bubble. Took the liberty of shifting back to the rapidly-dwindling thruster propellant, too, throwing a big percentage gauge into his view along with a shield percentage indicator. We were never designed to be that capable in this narrow of a vacuum tunnel, not with the weight of the proper combat armor hanging off the chassis, and so I once again started breathing hard to bring up my heart rate. An arch this way and that, hoping to feel that greasy pressure all over my skin...we both went roaring along back towards the entrance room and a moment of frantic wiggling gave me enough of a bubble for proper manuevering thrust. It was a hard dance, especially when you were all sweaty from deliberate exertion, but you could do a lot more with a rapier when you were dancing than when you were goose-stepping. The thruster gauge faded away as I shut that system down, making a face at how little was left, and the bubble strength indicator was slowly rising back to something more acceptable. I could feel myself getting lighter on my feet with a palpable relief._

_Nothing waited for us in our original entryway but the motionless rubble of the very first drone we'd given a stern lesson in Rule One-never surprise heavily armed warriors on the warpath. Hamster was already burning down the entryway, all thrusters still burning fuel as well as monopropellant for the best possible speed. Well, she took us seriously. I did a couple quick orbits of the room, feeling the shield build back up again and my own maneuverability with it. Jerome's breathing was going shallow and I could feel his heart rate begin to rise. This was what we'd all been waiting for. The door on the top level demanded red level clearance or better, which of course I now had, and I fed the maintenance access code to it, then the proper security authorization. It hissed open with a gratifying promptness and Jerome took us in at speed. A cutting platform hung on the rail shunt at the far end of the maintenance bay with one pontoon dismounted, automated tools from a repair console sparking and soldering deep in its revealed innards. It came to life as he brought me in, my own reflexes turning our straight approach into a nose-pivoting curve to keep us aimed. I could hear it try to transmit something-again using a very nonstandard modulation-and reflexively reached out to squelch the transmission with sheer directional energy. Stuck my fist in its screaming mouth, you might say._

_It didn't like that. With a puff of propellant from the intact thrusters it tore itself loose from the tools and the rail it was inductively coupled to. Something snapped actinically as the probes ripped loose and I could see a wisp of smoke curl upwards. The puffs became sporadic and it began to fall toward the high-security floor hatch, wide open thanks to my codes. Down...down...and through the hatch, tumbling uselessly. It'd done itself terminal damage trying to get free and go after us._

"Shit, here we go. Take gunnery, I've got missiles."

_He'd seen it at the same time I had. Tumbling down the shaft still, the cutting platform in its own terminal death throes had caught the attention of the remaining drones. Cracking my neck and arching over toward the hole in the floor, I dove, fingers spread and ready to spray death. Local 'up' reoriented itself and the feeble lunar gravity only served to heighten my speed straight down. The two pests popped out of niches in the big maintenance tunnel just as the alarm lights along the walls began to spin and flash. So much for the element of surprise._

_For the first time I saw an orange drone do something more impressive than go down like a little bitch. Their weapons were hot and they spat twin balls of orange plasma in synchrony at my nose, a zero-deflection boresight shot. Too bad my reflexes were inhumanly fast and my weapons moved at lightspeed. I twisted my torso, spinning the entire ship around the long axis as I lit up the lasers. Sucked my gut in as I felt Jerome push the throttle forward, and with a mighty heave smashed the bubble nearly flat along my back and belly. The balls passed by, crackling and dissipating, not even grazing the shields, and my riposte had, with the twist, cut deep slashes across their fuselages. Well, now I knew lasers worked neatly on pests. I streaked past and their wreckage began to tumble slowly downward, chasing me even in their death._

_We were closing on the cutting platform fast, still falling, still nothing more than an impediment, when I felt Jerome's launch command. It was the work of a microsecond to see where his eyes were focused when he'd pickled off a missile and before his finger even slackened I'd let one fly. Didn't take a genius to figure out he wanted that damn platform out of our way. And a missile did the job nicely. Its fireball was barely blossoming when I felt another two, well, call them gooses, from the boy. An eyedart left and right on his part and I blasted two homing missiles out of opposing pods. The trails burned curved lines through the smoke and debris cloud of the ex-platform, arcing out to either side of the huge chamber we'd just plunged into. I could hear pings and rattles as bits of metallic and plastic scrap bounced off my armor and the shielding effect was down to eighty percent or so but needs must when the devil drove. I'd already tagged each missile to a green blip I could see dimly through the rock but it was always nice to have visual confirmation once we could see more of the room._

_It stretched out in all directions; a gigantic cavern that looked like it had first been excavated by detonating an 'earthshaker' missile underground. Knowing PTMC's rough-and-ready approach to initial facility construction that might even have been what happened. A thick translucent barrier was directly ahead of us in our nose-down orientation, acting as the floor of the cavern. Beneath it I could make out the shapes of the computer banks and communications gear that were really the heart of the entire installation, the consoles for overrides or monitoring-all the juicy stuff I would have been interested in had they been manned. No, the real party piece of the place was the floor-to-ceiling reactor that generated power for the mine and then some. It was set back in a ledge where the control room didn't extend to-who would want to work with a gigantic fusion reactor directly above their head? Then again, Jerome seemed perfectly content sitting practically on top of one. That was a particular kind of insanity, not generally applicable. What was generally applicable were the drillers to either end of the room , each neatly spiked by a missile to the center of mass. And the red balls of its own plasma the reactor was venting directly at us._

_Jerome pulled up dangerously close to the floor and yawed back up and away as the first ball reached where we'd just been. It melted completely through the barrier separating the airless power cavern from the aired control area and a mighty plume of frozen oxygen spewed up from the hole. Not another damn shield-draining mess! This time we had the speed and the space to evade. I could see the computer banks sizzling as the plasma grounded itself among the expensive electronics but I didn't linger on the sight for long considering the drillers were spewing thruster juice ruinously fast to bring themselves to bear, and with us in the middle of the room they didn't need a lot of deflection for a good shot. He throttled up, dropping the nose to approximately in line with the far right driller, and squeezed the laser trigger a lot harder than was strictly required._

"What the fuck?"

_I could hear his outraged protest over the buzz of the lasers. A little axial wobble on my part and a slight narrowing of the fingers and I brought the beams together right in the damn thing's sensor 'eye' as it fired. One arm's laser scored a hit on the shield bubble, the entire thing fluorescing deep blue where the beam passed and the odd particles absorbed the energy. It seared like grabbing a soldering iron and I kicked sideways and sped up to get out of the beam. My little finger-twist in parting had cut the entire top of the driller free from the body and it fell forward off its rail still firing but straight down into the rock. Another ball sizzled past where we'd just been if I hadn't kicked aside and all I could do was notice that shields were down to 60% and articulate an incoherent argh of frustration back at him. The next ball was already heading for where we'd be in a second or two and I drastically reshaped the bubble to bring us to a halt. I could hear poor Jerome grunt under the deacceleration before he flipped us end-for-end and held down the missile trigger. A single green tendril connected the other driller to a random point on the walls, rapidly tracing down as it adjusted its aim. One laser wasn't functioning, that arm spitting coolant, and after I took the initiative to spike it with a wholly unneeded two guided missiles the entire thing was nothing more than good-sized chunks of scrap littering the floor. Another ball missed by the narrowest of margins as I pogoed us straight up about twenty feet and I could feel the sheer energy of the thing as a painful burn-shields were down to half strength from one lousy room of obsolete drones. No damn powerplant was going to try to shut itself down by puking its core out at me! He'd given me gunnery? I'd TAKE gunnery._

_"Emergency shutdown-gotta get it before it vents enough to be safe!"_

_And before the rest of the damn drones in the outpost made it in here. It wasn't the time but everything left moving in the place was inbound at best speed. Blips vanished as they hit the minefields but there weren't enough mines to stop them all._

_Another ball sizzled overhead, where we'd be if I continued my rise, and I dropped us back down again, Jerome kicking the pedals to bring me around in a circle-strafing arc. The hell with power consumption, it was time to show this accursed place what we could really do. I shoveled on the coal, so to speak, and let the lasers blaze away at full power. The shield generator was running flat-out as well and as the lasers began to sink deep circular scores around the base of the reactor I started up the Vulcan to chew into the support structures even further. Fuck ammo, fuck efficiency-I could actually feel myself getting hungry as my reactor's fuel was consumed. We were at the limit of how far we could go without looping around behind the mine's power plant and into suicidally tight quarters, so as another ball hissed where we would've been I stopped and reversed the direction of the strafing run. _

_Nothing was designed to withstand this kind of punishment except the armor and shielding of destroyer-class ships-which this wasn't. Coolant began to spew from the deep gashes into the support pillar, adding its own mist to the metal vapor and smoke of internal disintegrations. I turned the lasers off-too much bloom, not enough boom-and obediently salvoed off two final missiles in response to Jerome's double-pull on the pickle. They streaked home, into the cloud of devastation and deep into the exposed guts of the power plant, and went off with a detonation I wished I could have heard. There weren't any more balls now, and all I could hear across the entire EM spectrum was a painfully loud roar of uncontrolled power dissipation. Beneath us, the computer banks began to explode and all around us the mine was beginning to shake._

"Holy shit."

_Commented the boy, and I had to agree. If this was going to set the future pattern for encounters, we were going to need a lot of supplies and quite possibly better armament if we were so lucky to live so long. There was supposed to be a warning of imminent destruction but the reactor in its death throes-and I could already see plasma prominences ripple across its surface through the containment fields, like incipient sunspots-had swamped any kind of announcement. What was important was that the exit hatch was open and there was no time to waste. The shields were already peeling away from sleeting gamma radiation-I could feel the alpha rays bouncing off my skin like the kind of blazing summer day that'll give you an instant sunburn-and we'd overstayed our welcome._

_On the side of the room away from the reactor, busily eating itself, was the promised escape hatch. It was open with a red light strobing above it and boy was it ever time to leave. Four evacuation pods hung on each of the exit rails, canopies open, with enough space to get at least a hundred people out. That was good. It was slightly less than good that the space between the pods was enough for a driller to squeeze past; to be precise it was two and a half inches less than good. That was the clearance between my wingtips and the sides of the pods. There wasn't enough time to blow them away, not enough time to manuever into position for proper laser work. I sent a ripple up the sticks to Jerome's hands to warn him that I was taking control, exhaled-turned the shield generator up to max output-and sucked it in to get the field that close to the hull. The greater particle density would give us better protection but the less room I had to tweak the shape of the damn thing meant the more concentration I'd have to spend on preserving shape and the less I could deform it for fine control. Nobody ever said it was easy._

_"Now this is how you finesse a tight tunnel. Watch and learn."_

_I could see any number of probable outcomes as we streaked toward the exit with the best thrust I could concentrate on applying. We'd collide with a pod, rip a hole in the hull, crash, fry from either the radiation storm or in the blastfront or just be crushed to death when the cavern came down. We'd be too slow, the radiation front would catch us halfway through the tunnel, fry the shields, drop the bubble, and we'd crash on the uphill slope, then melt in the debris blast. Would there be enough ambient particles to transmit heat like atmosphere would? Fuckit. Up…up…a shimmy just so…and we were past! The lit tunnel stretched ahead, curving up and around. I took just enough attention off the evac to mentally put on sunglasses by way of damping down sensors for the likely finale._

_Ahead, the welcome star-shot black of the sky. Behind, the feeling of impinging radiation against the bubble abruptly stopped. We were way too close to this and there just wasn't any more time for nice and I had no idea how bad it was going to be._

_"Gee!" _

_Was all I had time for as I pressurized the seat and did something injudicious with the bubble. Upward and outward we streaked for three long seconds, accelerating at a brutal thirty six Gs to the outside world. Twelve Gs wasn't exactly a picnic to me, either, and Jerome's breathing was labored from his steady shout to keep his organs where they belonged. By the time I was done pouring on the juice we were a mile straight up and gaining distance at another two thirds of a mile a second. I threw up the rear view on Jerome's helmet as I bent course back for the orbital processing station, careful not to put the poor boy through more than one internal G for now. _

"Pushy bitch."

_He panted, sounding more or less none the worse for wear._

"But would you look at that…"

_Behind us the Lunar surface over where the science station had been simply subsided without drama into new contours. A new crater was visible where the central cavern used to be, smooth-edged and glowing in the IR imagery I overlaid from internal heat that had melted the rocks. At this range the wavefront of hard radiation from the blast did little enough to damage the bubble. It seemed innocuous enough from up here but the best vantage point for an event like that was from as much distance as feasible!_

_I could hear him sigh deeply, gathering his presence of mind. I did the same, boosting at a paltry three Gs back toward the station in preparation for a mid-course flip._

_"Relax…"_

_I said, not unkindly._

_"We only have to do that twenty eight more times."_


	14. The Guns of Neveron

Chapter 14: The Guns Of Neveron

"All it takes is all you got."

-Marc Davis

_"Relax….we only have to do that twenty eight more times."_

Easy enough for her to say, she wasn't the one with incipient bruises all over her body from the bolsters. I was bloody ecstatic to leave the outpost behind and beneath us…that entire ordeal had taken maybe five minutes but I felt like I'd aged five years in it.

"Scratch one tourist attraction."

I commented idly, stretching out with a wince. Jenny projected her image over most of my view as if we were chatting face to face, raising a delicate eyebrow with a look of curiosity but otherwise remaining silent. I was the tactician; it was up to me to decide what I wanted data on now that we had a moment for some post-combat analysis.

"Uh. Damn. Hold one."

Adrenaline was still coursing through every nerve, grounding itself where it could. I had the shakes something awful, the cold shivers. I wanted to punch somebody in the face. I wanted to celebrate life by fucking somebody for hours. I wanted to be able to think straight. It took concerted effort to pull the mind back from that atavistic perfection.

"…OK, OK. Two things on my mind right now. Hostile behavior and general combat strategy."

Jenny nodded thoughtfully before responding.

_"First off, I'm picking up no reports of anomalous activity in the military guardpost from the station's sensors, I'll tell you if that changes. I think we got away clean. As for the mine, we saw no individual response until directly damaged by us or at point-blank range, counting the air pressure blowing the platform into my face. Worth considering. No group response until they got a transmission from a damaged drone or picked it up on their sensors."_

A clean getaway to go rearm and do it all over again. The hostages could wait until we got back to the station, they were out and anything after that-unless it was a usefully informative debriefing-wasn't my problem. Not the worst start to an ambitious enterprise especially if the drones would stay dumb.

"How are they controlled? Autonomous?"

If there was some sort of central brain we could go after first…Jenny frowned, looking amused.

_"Hell no! You think they'd waste the credits? There's a central controller in each facility if you believe the literature…."_

Bingo!

_"…but it basically just adjusts drone routines as needed, kind of like a big scheduler. Go to point X, execute program Y. Things like Program Y and the movement routines and when to seek maintenance are all part of the drones although they can be modified by the controller as needed."_

Dammit!

"So unless you wanted to take the time to tell the controller to tell them to go dive into the reactor…"

Probably shouldn't've suggested that. I could see her face light up and her image pulled back far enough to let me see her rubbing her hands like an evil mastermind.

_"Now that you mention it! If the mines had their communications open I probably could-tell you what, I'll see how much 'out' is 'out' on their transmitters but I'm not hopeful about it. If comms are that far down I'd have to reprogram it from the control room anyway via cable or something unwieldy-and that'd be right by the reactor anyway."_

At which point everything would be hot for our blood and we'd be close enough to the emergency exit and dodging hostile fire to do things the old way. I wrinkled my nose and sighed. Yeah, that would've been too easy.

"And the controller for an active mine may have drones programmed differently. More aggressive toward us."

_"You're learning my job…yeah, about all we can take away from this is that things might be radically different every subsequent time."_

The lunar surface dwindled behind us. Already I couldn't see the mark we'd left. I could see the lights of civilization gleaming steady and blinking from one of the other colonies, couldn't identify it. All that mattered was that they were counting on us whether they knew it or not-to handle this in secret, to somehow prevent the military from scourging everything, to somehow leave them the strength and resources to rebuild what we'd be blowing away. I'd had a glimpse of the big picture enough to know I didn't want to see it any clearer or for any longer.

"What else is new?"

I commented wearily and put the thought away with a whole cabinet of similarly depressing counterparts.

"You want to fill me in on those red reactor blobs?"

Jenny outright bared her teeth at the mention of them . Even from her, it still wasn't a friendly gesture.

_"Some cocksucker decided that when the reactor needed to shut down in a controlled fashion one of the options was to vent the working plasma and damp the reaction that way. It was trying to take itself subcritical before we could nudge it the other way. Sensible, just the plasma venting is supposed to be done in a single direction into a refractory set of conduits, not AT US. Great defensive measure."_

I frowned. That didn't sound at all normal for PTMC standards, unless it was something for 'high-value installations'-AKA military bases.

"Sounds like the controller did some programming it shouldn't have had access to…or was reprogrammed by somebody."

A curt nod from her, arms crossed over her slight chest. She was serious enough for the time being not to be augmenting her image to pinup proportions.

_"Among other possibities. I'll see what I can narrow down. Just don't get hit-one of those bastards would rip away maybe three-quarters of our shields, the next might go entirely through the hull. And then there's the radiation."_

"Who needs kids?"

_"Or hair?"_

"Or bone marrow?"

_"Or a life expectancy beyond a couple days on this contract?"_

The exchange was rapid-fire and a bit sarcastic on both sides. I was more concerned with the larger issues at hand, though.

"Or being fast enough to get the right shot off? I outreact most humans. These aren't. I'm too slow and we both know it."

Jenny didn't answer for a long moment. I felt the gravity pushing me back in my seat fade as she flipped herself end-for-end at the midpoint of our trajectory to the station, then come back on the other direction, pushing me forward instead. It was less comfortable but I was used to it. Her image in my helmet spread long-fingered hands and shrugged eloquently.

_"I…can take gunnery. Take the snap-shots as they come. I'll tell you up front I'm still uncomfortable with the idea of taking the triggers away from you for more than the occasional snipe, and the idea of being responsible for gunnery as well as translating your movements into bubble shaping kind of intimidates me. I may not be as quick as you're expecting."_

It was an eminently fair criticism. I was just the squishy thing in the seat who'd be suggesting the way to go at that point. The horse under the gunfighter, the tank driver to the gunner, helm to tactical. But it might give us a better chance of success.

"When we've got time and leisure to try to impress each other I'll have time to be a bit irked. Do you some good to practice sticking a knife in the front, anyway."

Who had time to banter? We'd go a little nuttier if we kept it serious all the time.

_"With that in mind, any combat changes you wanna make? I say wax those suckers as quick as I can shoot, if we can get resupplied after every run…"_

Ahead the processing station loomed. The big scoop at the end of the bottom arm was sitting idle, fields off. What would normally be catching the ores magnetically flung upwards from the scattered active mines still on the lunar surface sat useless and still with no reactivation in the foreseeable future. As a symbol of the economic devastation we were going to be causing, it was a pretty inescapable one. Jenny was taking a different approach path up toward the collector basket, probably to discourage nonexistant pursuit, but I was thinking. Our armament was really the worst thing to bring to bear on mining drones designed to be resistant to drilling lasers, falling rocks, and stray explosives. The only edge we had was the advantage of military-specification gear and a lot more power to put behind it. For perhaps the first time in our combat engagements our missiles weren't fast enough to be decisive. Without the shield bubble we were stuck on peroxide thrusters and up shit creek for endurance and range unless by some happy-and expensive-coincidence the mine was pressurized.

"Minimum engagement window, that's really all I care about. I'm not going to slow down or stop unless we're waiting for the Ball, so keep those doors opening or warn me, make sure nothing lasts long enough under fire to get a signal out, and for god's sake don't launch the big boys without warning!"

She chuckled at that, rubbing her palms together again.

_"Easy pickings, my kind of run. You can get some rest if you need it on the interplanetary runs assuming our little drone army cooperates and gives us the margin of time NOT to pull 3 Gs steady-state."_

I shuddered just thinking about it. Today's little adventure would already leave me with a fair set of bruises and soreness, and it wasn't like you could take 10 hours in a soft station bed somewhere with the entire solar system on the brink of chaos. Hell, if there were reprisals from what I'd already done the military would have to get itself involved and then we could just go and watch Earth's sprawling civilization crumble into feuding colonies from somewhere closer to 'home'. Best not to dwell on that.

"Interplanetary under constant accel? I'd say we've been through worse but…we haven't. Just keep your eye on that seven-figure retainer."

Jenny snorted something about useless posthumous rewards and looped away from the ore tunnel at the last moment, swooping up and around the girders of the big processing plant on her way to the hangars. I grunted with the change of vector and went back to thinking. We'd established nothing except that it was OK to squander ammo and the only way was the hard way. I didn't even really notice we'd crossed back into the hangar until I caught sight of the canopy lifting in my peripheral vision. The Hamster Ball was poised for the next outward flight, fuel supplies being topped off as another crew busily loaded more mines into the dispensers. I couldn't see through its canopy from our angle to see if Hamster herself was still strapped in but the passenger compartment was closed back up again. Quentin's crew and the missile cart were already in position to top us off, and I had to marvel at the overall efficiency given we hadn't even touched down yet. I could hear the roar of the air through Jenny's turbines even through the helmet and I enjoyed the feeling of it savagely ruffling my flightsuit as she brought us to a three-point landing mere feet from the missile cart.

Quentin shot me a double-barreled thumbs-up as the picker began to rise up toward the pods. I pulled off my helmet as Jenny spun her engines back down to idle and grinned back at him.

"Well?"

He asked loudly above the residual noise, supervising the rapid reinsertion of missiles into the first pod. With some practice fresh in their minds the crew was moving faster now.

"Call it four drones with your missiles and half a reactor…makes what, four beers and a shot per tech so far?"

"And counting, from the sound of things! Hear you got two live ones-Hamster went screaming out of the Ball toward sickbay with them in tow. Nice job."

Pleasantries were all well and good but this was a job that every hand was needed for and that was all he apparently could spare time for before waving an apologetic hand and returning to pitching missiles up onto the picker. I didn't think he needed to hear about the hostage we hadn't gotten there in time to rescue and it wasn't without a tinge of regret that I watched the technicians scurry about. Mobility-it was easy to forgo and hard to do without. I ached in every fiber but didn't have the luxury to get out and stretch…wasn't getting any younger, either.

"(Come to think of it…)"

I subvocalized into the vicinity of the cockpit.

"(Get me a time hack until we're back outbound and make sure Hannah's back here.)"

_"(Working with the natives have you a little jumpy, dear? Best guess ten and that's with all propellant filled. Even if you don't want it, it'll still take time on the Ball and we could use the topoff. Shoo. Stretch. Take a drink. Take a leak. You _sound_ sore and I don't need any more of your complaints.)"_

Bowing to the face of a superior argument and the retraction of the restraints I clambered over the lip of the cockpit and down to the flooring. Quentin shot me a curious glance but the crew hurrying over from the fueling depot with high-pressure hoses swarmed between us before I could answer. It took them a few moments before they located the refueling ports but once I was satisfied they weren't trying to fill the lasing cavities with H2O2 I wheeled around and made good time for the station facilities. I could hear the tannoy activate, Jenny's dulcet-secretary tone fuzzing out across the entire area.

_"Would Hamster please report soonest to Hangar One for sitrep and imminent departure….Hamster to Hangar One."_

Well, at least that was in hand. I hadn't heard any broad-spectrum addresses before…hell, I hadn't even heard _any _announcements in the time we'd been aboard the processing station. Understandable given the virtual shutdown of the station but nevertheless Jenny had once again assured that people were paying attention to her. I'd always thought it was too entertaining to be considered pathological.

Nothing untoward happened for the next necessary several minutes. I had the place to myself and decided it was as good a place as any to do a little stretching out once the business at hand was concluded. There wasn't a lot of room in the tile-lined lavatory, certainly not the sort of place you'd find on Earth where you didn't have to lug all your building materials up the long gravity well, but there was enough to verify that the floor was more or less clean and enough time to lie down on my back and close my eyes. The chill felt good against my cheek and it felt even better to have something pressing on my back instead of phantom weight sitting on my chest as was the usual pattern. It was peaceful enough for the moment and seemed to drain my energy out of every on-edge nerve and muscle.

I'd be the first to admit that I was feeling a little strung out and a lot more useless. You couldn't fight machines. You _didn't_ fight machines…they were faster than you, had higher tolerances for environment and movement, better aim, perfect consistency, the works. Nothing new. The bubble had given people a slight edge in combat simply due to the immutable rules of kinetic energy. Anything built big enough to pack a human-outwitting databank just couldn't switch vectors fast enough to engage an unpredictable human that needed a lot fewer pounds for life support and had access to the kind of firepower that you usually got along with the bubble. Fixed installations, well, you start talking some pretty massive emitters to land fatal damage in a short period of time on something that's dodging that fast…and emitters that big don't traverse fast. In open space engagements fuel reserves generally made the difference, whoever had to stop dodging first lost. Controlling approach paths and establishing overlapping fields of fire, as always, would make the difference. The drones weren't smart so far but the hell of it was that they didn't have to be. Even trichording wouldn't make much of a difference when not only were we the bigger target for once but also trapped in corridors. Dynamiting fish in a barrel wasn't quite such a great idea when you were in the barrel as well.

I growled to myself, feeling the vibration send pain through my bruised ribcage. There just wasn't any way around it…our best chance at survival was for Jenny to have to take snapshots as she saw them and let me do nothing more than piloting work, which still meant inputs she'd have to translate and interpret. I was reduced to providing suggestions, which added a gnawing sense of guilt to a suddenly roiling stomach. Some of the ramifications I hadn't considered before were sinking in. All it would take was one mine or outpost or whatever managing to get off a signal. Tightbeam, even, we'd never trace it, and we'd never outrun it, and if there were sabotaged PTMC facilities out there that had communication links with the outside world-the smart way to stage a takeover-the nightmare image of arriving at planet after planet, only to find that the drones had been let loose on the civilian population before we'd gotten there, flitted through my mind. A wandering interplanetary helpless follower of disaster, all because of a single slipup…Enough energy came back that I was able to duck into a stall and be quietly sick into the toilet. It didn't help much.

I waved off Jenny's concerned noise, a gesture she couldn't see, and muttered something incoherent that apparently reassured her. Nothing was wrong with me that waking up wouldn't fix. A shame I was already awake. Splashing water on my face over the sink-they had running water? On an orbital station? Did they count it as a worker benefit?-I found it was harder than usual to meet my own gaze in the mirror. The man that looked back looked like hell. Wrung out, haggard, going a little grey, and scared. Nine figures, saving civilization…if we made it out the other end of this one I was going to settle down for a few years. Buy some property in some tropical paradise, assuming Earth's climate stablized any time soon, and settle down to work on my tan and let Jenny plot and plan in finances or politics. It was a big if, though, and time was ticking down.

Carefully patting myself dry, I grabbed the top of the stall and did a few chin-ups on the door to keep loosened up before heading out. Easy enough in low-G and the last thing you wanted was a muscle cramp in flight. That was the surest way to fly right into those cumulogranite clouds. There was likely still enough time left before the takeoff that I could've hid in there for a while longer but there just wasn't any point to it.

Seeing Hamster at a dead run toward me once I stepped through the swinging door was just about enough to make me take a step right back through and hold the door against her, but she was grinning from ear to ear. I had enough time to register that she wasn't going to stop before she jumped onto me, latching arms around my shoulders in a hug. Gravity didn't do a damn thing to change her mass, just her weight, and it'd been a while since I'd had to react that quickly in that kind of an environment. Which is a fancy way of saying I went stumbling back into the bathroom with a laughing nutball practically tearing two fistfuls of my jumpsuit off. She let me go finally, trapping the door open with a foot, and stood legs akimbo with hands on her hips.

"She's alive!"

The expected question never got a fair chance to be asked.

"My partner! Angela, local defenses?"

It'd been a while…maybe an hour. Maybe. But felt like a year gone. Dim memories of the conversation floated to the surface.

"Right, you mentioned you'd resigned yourself to unpleasantness…glad to hear she's OK."

The evac hadn't been the smoothest, Lord knew.

"She's in the medbay being treated for shock and smoke inhalation right now, but she's gonna pull through, her and the intern both! I'm so happy I could almost forget you're not curvy enough to kiss!"

Trapped in a bathroom with a stir-crazy security pilot, a tight deadline…

"(Dear Penthouse Letters…)" I muttered to myself and caught the tail end of Jenny laughing like a hyena in response. I could smile, and did so.

"I'm really glad she's….both of them….are going to be all right! Uh, not to break up the mood here but was she in any shape to give any information about what happened?"

Thankfully that did break up the mood, just what I was hoping for. Her smile turned to a slight frown and she paused for a moment, stepping back out of the doorway and holding it open for me. With a breath of relief I stepped through it back into the main corridor just outside the hangars and pulled the door closed behind me. Down at the other end by the personnel elevator a small knot of people were staring at the two of us, muttering back and forth amongst themselves. The only thing that travelled faster than missile fire was news.

"No."

She said flatly, propping a hand against the wall by my head to not coincidentally block the line of sight of the onlookers from seeing our mouths move.

"She wasn't really lucid….mentioned something about a routine PTMC dispatch from Mercury but with some kind of flakey coding. I think. I'm no comms tech."

_"(Uh oh.)"_


	15. Mayhem Go Round

Chapter 15: Mayhem-Go-Round

"The use of force is _always_ an answer to problems. Whether or not it's a satisfactory answer depends on a number of things, not least the personality of the person making the determination."

-David Drake

_That was about all I needed to hear. My mind was racing overtime-and that was saying something. Coded payload. Systems virus? If everything in PTMC facilities was standardized, as was the cheap and efficient way to run, that would go a long way to explain the shutdown. Except...the issue had come up time and again and PTMC had sworn up and down their systems were foolproof, even to the point of staging contests for a fair amount of prize money to anybody who could find a flaw. Everything was supposed to be locked down, and the money they'd put forth was more than any black hat would've made in the black markets such flaws were traded among. I'd thought a time or two of bending my own fingers that way but didn't want to get the boy in trouble when the logical questions came up, he was no code monkey. Sure, it was possible it was just the last received message and this problem was stemming from other sources, but if somebody HAD figured a way to crack PTMC system security and it wasn't the UEG Council it explained a lot. Who or how didn't matter as much as getting the situation under control._

_Think, Jenny, think. The smart thing to do would be to take communications offline to prevent any noninvasive fixes. Which means the goal had to be disruption, straight-up terrorism, not just skimming profits or pranking miners or using PTMC resources for one's own personal projects. You want to do It that way, you'd leave everything working normally. This bore all the hallmarks of somebody trying to directly strike at an economically-interconnected solar system and sabotage humanity back to single-planetery operations. Fertile grounds for divisiveness, balkanization, overall weakening everybody._

_That was when it came to mind with the unwanted suddenness of stepping out of bed and onto a pet's fresh surprise present. If my premises were correct, and my leaps of logic justified, I knew who was behind this. But…God, I didn't want to think about it. Especially didn't want to talk about it. Not to him. I knew he knew I wasn't quite human. There were a lot of people from the outer colonies that weren't quite human, where the legacies of animal experimentation had been more widespread and more useful, where cosmic rays had wrought interesting adaptations in a few short generations, and he wasn't exactly a full hom. sap. himself, but I didn't think he really appreciated how far I had been from Earth stock. Hoping against hope, I hoped that I was wrong, or it was just a particularly well-bankrolled separatist group, or anything but what my dread outlined._

_Hamster and Jerome exchanged meaningless conversation, their words shimmering around and across my awareness like white noise. It wasn't important. This was._

_"Change of plans. We have to inspect a controller. In depth. In that military guardpost."_

_Hannah paused in her reply, seeing the sudden abstracted look on Jerome's face as he held up a hand apologetically to her and came trotting back into the hangar. She followed a few paces behind, heading over to her ship and swearing audibly as she tried to power herself between the refueling crews and mine cart. Jerome stopped a few paces away, trying not to interfere with the missile boys. While Quentin was just supervising the attachment of the last refilled pod, I had sprouted several refueling hoses in the meantime. It was refreshing to be back with full stocks again but the sensations were relatively easy to ignore._

"(Hardware level or…)"

_No, he wasn't going to like this much._

_"Code level. On the ground, portable diagnostic unit, full code dump out of the banks."_

_I gave him a moment to process that, drawing the same tactical conclusions I was. He looked appropriately grim._

"(That's going to mean going in on the ground into the control room. As a squishy.)"

_"With the biggest goddamn plasma rifle you can carry. That's all going to be pressurized, too. If there's any life signs in there…well, the military has some pretty good anti-intruder drones."_

Jerome sighed, cocking a weary eyebrow up at me.

"(Let me guess...defense contractor is PTMC?)"

_"And facility owner. Weren't you the one bitching about not having anything to do? You get to get out, get some exercise, see the sights…"_

_He snorted at that, shaking his head and slipping past the stocky man in a cryosuit who was eying pressure gauges on the hose that snaked up into a belly access port. Jerome found a place to sit on the hangar floor, leaning amiably against the back of my front landing strut. _

"(Your solutions are worse than my problems. Can you get a floor plan and access codes? I'd just as soon be able to play this as a peaceful tour until we get to the reactor.)"

_"You and everybody else. About the best I can do from here is grab the plans of the room layout as it was detailed in the leasing agreement. I have no idea how the UEG forces actually installed equipment or access controls."_

_It was arguably my fault. I didn't have a back door into the military. Not…strictly speaking._

("Hell, I don't want inseam measurements of everybody on base. Can you get me anything, PTMC-side maintenance records, a rough idea of how many drones based on power budget? I'm thinking 'inspection tour' if you can route through the Io Institute and get admin-level access to their UEG rep in situ…at least to forge credentials.")

_Not , but not bad at all. If nothing else this was teaching us both a little cross-training. _

_"Problem with that is even a properly coded inquiry would take about 40 minutes to get to Jupiter from here as the photon flies. AND we don't know if that communications blackout affects all of the PTMC relay facilities between here and there. I could bounce back through Shiva and try to find other relays, but given what's been going on….I think anything left is going to be completely swamped. IF we could get through, IF they answer…another 40 minutes back. We don't have time. Do we? I may have to play it by ear."_

_There was a pause, and then he balled his hand into a fist and slugged it into the plates that folded back over the front landing strut when it was hard enough to damage his skin or my plating but hard enough that my sensors registered the momentary strain._

("You know I'd have no problem with that if there were some of your tough hide between me and cutting lasers. It's not that I don't trust you utterly, it just really is starting to piss me off that we have to keep making these ridiculous gambles. Can't send Hamster, if she gets zapped there's nobody to run evac. And I won't ask some unknown from Security up here to be our single point of failure. Goddammit!")

_Another punch to the plate, somewhat harder this time. I wasn't happy about it either.I'd commandeered the station's outside transmitters, shouting at the Lagrange points for the heavy iron I had a feeling was prowling in wait there. But nobody was answering any frequency I legitimately had access to._

_"No shit. From what I hear from Earth the UEG's on full war footing to prevent any further incidents, all across the solar system. I'm trying to punch out from this station and get in touch with one of the big battlewagons to request passcodes but I'm not sure they're listening to anything but military communications and the last thing I want to fucking trigger is World War 3 by hacking in, even if I could. I think I can get you in and keep you safe. I hope."_

_If not…well. I'd made my decision a long time ago. Contingency plans. Upload a full dump of my life's memories and thoughts and knowledge to every damn news feed on the planet, let them know they weren't alone out there, give them a fighting chance. Then aim for Alpha Centauri , pour on the juice, erase the control programming, and see how fast I could get up to before interstellar dust shredded what was left of me into merciful oblivion. Always have a backup plan, especially the kinds you never hoped to have to use._

_"It gets better."_

_The Hamster Ball was electronically reporting ready and my fuel reserves were showing full. Reactor tanks, meagre propellant reserves. The fuel hose slithered off back toward the pump assemblies and Quentin shouted an all-clear, the missile cart once again going back to the munitions elevator._

_"There's nothing here on this station that'll give you a chance on foot. Internal defense drones big enough to be dangerous were designed to be proof against precisely the kind of firepower the internal squishies were likely to be able to bring to bear. You might be able to knock them out with a fusion cannon."_

("I might be able to LIFT a fusion cannon.")

_"Yeah. Look. I've got a plan. It involves hollering for help. From our favorite trigger-happy sorts. I mean why screw around, right? We'll just run a normal approach to Tyco Base squawking our ident, like we'd have to do anyway, and then see if we can talk some sense into whoever's in charge. Get some credentials for you, some forged transport ID for Hamster, then just waltz into that little guard post like nothing's wrong."_

("You're one crazy bitch, you know that?")

_Jerome clambered to his feet and ducked out from under my belly, glancing over at Hannah who was already in her cockpit before clambering back up into mine. He flashed a thumbs-up over to her and Quentin alike before I cycled the 'coffin lid' back down and let him get his helmet settled and sealed._

"I guess the UEG is giving PTMC their chance to clean up their mess first….but it feels like goosing a tiger. Nevermind that we've got carte blanche. So what's our exfil plan? Something subtle from the control room to melt down the reactor or did you feel like using another one for target practice?"

_I hadn't thought that far ahead. There were too many factors._

_"I thought for once we could get out without quite such a suntan. If it can be done from a greater distance I'm game, but we'll tackle that if we get that far. With any luck I can pull a fast one with the controller, program the drones to recognize the reactor as a choice ore vein or intruder or whatever makes them most homicidal. Besides, we'll have the entire paranoia and heavy firepower of Tycho right at hand, right? Look. Boss. Love. If you can think of ANY better idea, I need to hear it. This whole thing has me thinking tactically and you thinking strategically and it's driving both of us nuts."_

_I brought my fans to idle, then a quick excursion to full speed. Air blasted the deck plates beneath us and I hopped a few feet straight up before settling back down again as I let the surge bleed off. Everything still looked good and I gave the boy the usual views, including a ghostly overlay of me looking serious._

_There was a long, heartbreaking pause before he answered._

"Fuck it. No. We'll try droneplomacy. Brief Hamster, I guess I'm going to sit back here and get used to being a VIP."

_It was still a lousy damn idea, but I got on the horn long enough to give her the brief outlines of the plan. Who she thought I was, I didn't much care. Probably still some Earth-bound secretary or clever imitative her one thing, she listened well. Swore well, too. I caught at least six obscenities in five languages I had to compare against my language banks to decipher. Who said you didn't learn new things in stressful moments? With a curt "If you get me killed I'm going to punch you in the face from the afterlife" she agreed to hold fire and cut the channel unceremoniously._

_"Well then, __sir__, enjoy the ride. Please let me know if there's anything I can do for you."_

_I put all the smarm into the phrase that it could handle, projecting my small image along the readouts in a chauffeur's uniform and bowing as I took off smoothly. This was going to take a lot of finesse. A quick goose of thrust and we were out through the big air retention field once more on an easy ballistic coast down to the surface. I'd have to put in a mid-path course correction to run the standard approach path to the Tycho base but that wasn't particularly difficult. Hamster flared her thrusters and came out behind us, falling into a standard escort pattern._

"I can think of several things, Miss Corbell, but I don't think we have the space or time at the moment."

_Heh._

_"Pity."_

_I threw up a diagram of the base for him, a combination of standard satellite imagery and what I'd gleaned from PTMC records back on Shiva. Sited in Tycho crater, it was one of the oldest facilities homo sap. had built off their little blue marble. The crater was pretty hard to miss, and the construction yards sat squarely in the center surrounded by layer after layer of supporting facilities. Although these days the heavy iron was all contractor-built on far-flung satellites and there didn't need to be enough space to lay down an entire carrier that close to Earth any more, the space was still in use, more or less converted into drydocks and a spaceport. If need be, they could LAND a carrier-although I didn't want to contemplate the deft touch at the helm that would take-and still have room for tenders and normal shuttles to various places. Tyco's crater wall was ripped completely through in eight places, melted rock piled up to either side of the orbit-cut defilades, placing the main base at the center of a star of roads out and to the major settlements. Large guardposts blocked every entry, situated by the crater walls and leaving the base itself at the center of a gigantic flat space. It was one of these guardposts that had dropped off the air-and made me really wonder about the other seven. One more question to file away. I zoomed in on them for him, showing the rough layout of the place. A standard barrier checkpoint led to a pressurized hut and from there down into a pretty good-sized central space. Enough space for a reasonable force of soldiers to be billeted for a reasonably extended time. They built big back then, better too much capacity than not enough. From PTMC's plans the place had just as much interior space as the entire ex-mine converted to research station that we'd just gotten out of. _

_"Looks like original plan design was for, what, two-three hundred soldiers and gear? Per guardpost? What were they expecting, a full-fledged Nazi assault?"_

"Soldiers, engineers, scientists, laborers. This was after the Eastern Seaboard asteroid…"

_He flinched for a moment. Shit. Put my foot in my mouth there. Fortunately he continued without much more than the pause._

"…when everybody figured Earth itself was going to be collateral damage. I seem to remember something about turning Tycho into another command center."

_"Hunh. Well. Better this than the warren under the main base, right? Can you even imagine?"_

_He snorted derisively at me, rolling his eyes._

"Yes. Unfortunately. Any luck getting in touch?"

_For the past little while I'd been turning my transmitters up and shouting a combination of my registered Io ID and our PTMC directive toward the base. And that was when I saw it coming over the horizon. It hadn't registered on any of my sensors and I flinched hard enough to bring us to a complete stop about as hard as it was possible to do without squashing Jerome. Didn't stop him from grunting in discomfort, or Hannah overshooting our position before braking to match where I hung._

_"Uh. I think something heard us, yes."_

_Its orbit was bringing it closer at a measured pace and I could see a distinct circular shadow visible on the lunar surface below. Battlecruisers were LARGE, easily a quarter-mile in diameter and looking like a tapered hamburger patty. I didn't have the exact specs and was still human enough to have my jaw hanging open at it rather than pulling up combat data. Not that it would have done much good. The mere fact we were in visual range and still in one piece meant it was more or less friendly. Where my body was smooth, its was ugly. Designed to live and fight in space, with atmosphere descent restricted for emergency purposes, mechanical excrescenes studded its surface like a gigantic toad squatting on a gigantic dinner plate. I could make out the gigantic rocket nozzles on its underside, the only things that could lift it out of atmosphere safely. What I wouldn't've given for some of its primary beam projectors, nevermind that they were larger than my entire bulk…but for now, pinned between it and the Moon, I was just glad it wasn't dropping on top of me._

"You fucking _think_?"

_His heart rate was not in a good place, but it was starting to moderate again. I ever-so-cautiously began to apply thrust toward the approach path again when it lit me up like a Christmas tree. Every electronic warfare indicator in the cockpit came on, beeping, flashing, buzzing. It was all I could do to think with the din roaring in my ears. Fingers jammed tight into my ears, I manually turned all Jerome's indicators off except a single 'missile lock' light for redundant reminder's sake and once again brought our forward motion to a halt. By now the battlecruiser was actually passing above us, filling the sky with mechanism and menace. It was a hell of a view except for the threat of imminent death._

_"Would you just hail them before we vanish into vapor?"_

_Being screamed at, broad-spectrum, and knowing that enough ordinance to make a large chunk of the Moon vanish was locked on me didn't make me the happiest girl in the world. He opened his mouth and I opened a channel on the only clear frequency. In my mind, avoiding getting blown away qualified as perfectly valid emergency use whatever the spectrum enforcers might have to say later. Unasked, I applied a bit of backwards thrust to stay in the same relative position under the thing as it orbited._

"Calling Lunar-orbital battlecruiser, this is Jerome Corbell in II-JNY-02 and Hannah ((?)) in PTMC security shuttle "Hamster Ball" operating under PTMC directive MD-1032 ((?)). We are tasked with unidentified hostile interdiction in all PTMC facilities. Requesting logistics support and available intel from OOD or XO from either you or Tycho for guardpost cleansing. We need to talk. Keeping station and awaiting instructions, over."

_He was sweating, I was sweating, if you played the odds Hannah probably needed a change of jumpsuit. I slugged the directive as a standard plaintext file, no authentication because that would mean coded payloads, then for good measure slugged the encoded version for transmission as well. Hung for a lamb, hung for a lion…_

_The white noise snapped off suddenly and I gingerly took my fingers out of my ears long enough to listen for a reply on normal channels. It came via a tightbeam laser, tapping us and the Ball both. They were putting enough power into just a comm laser that I had to turn their gain down to a tenth of a percent to avoid eardrum-unsafe levels. To say nothing of what it was likely to do to my I thought I hosed the watts around._

"Lieutenant Daniels of the Potemkin to II-JNY-02 and 'Hamster Ball'. Maintain station until otherwise directed or you will be fired upon. This is your final warning."

_The voice was male, at a pitch suggesting relative youth, and I didn't need the numbers for the voice stress analyzers to tell that we weren't the only ones on a hair trigger._

"Be advised Commander Roth is in receipt of your transmission and decoding it now. Stand by."

"This is going well."

_Jerome commented drily. _

"And that's one BIG mother. Do you feel safer?"

_"Personally? At the moment? Not really. Kind of makes you want to send a postcard with that view, doesn't it? 'Having a great time, wish you were here. Instead'. Who'd you send it to?"_

"You mean who do I wish that on? Eh. Dravis, maybe."

_"Save that wish for when you're in hostile territory in a leaky vacsuit. I may just bounce that to Shiva, come to think of it. Y'know. If you want."_

_He'd just opened his mouth to reply when our conversation was drowned by a blast of static as the Potemkin forced the communication channel into high encryption. Wasn't a laser beam at point-blank sufficient?_

"This is Colonel Roth. Mr. Corbell, I am a _very_ busy man. What the hell do you need?"

_Like they'd been doing anything but floating around like a murderous balloon...but that was why I didn't really talk to the clients._

"Colonel, we just cleared the PTMC science outpost of hostiles and neutralized further threats from the facility. We're tasked to go down into your guardpost next but given the sensitivity of the area wanted to work with you to try and get in and out without necessarily having to have a running firefight, and we need to get a readout of the drone controller to try and interpret possible causes of this endemic issue."

_Hearing him in his serious mode always did give me a pleasant tingle. He was so earnestly edible…no matter how lousy the timing happened to be._

"I got that report from my signals division not long ago. You blew out the reactor, didn't you?"

_If anything, the Colonel sounded a bit amused. That was a good sign. If there was no love lost between PTMC and this particular bit of the UEG, we might be able to work that…_

"What Post-Terran wanted. Explicitly. If the contamination couldn't be contained by any other means. We're going to need high-ranking credentials to get into the barracks areas for potential hostage rescue and run adminstrative overrides in the control room. I'd very much like to avoid having to blow the place. Colonel, are there any men still in there? And why just the one guardpost?"

_The question on everybody's minds right now. There was a pause. The communication was clear enough that I could hear him shift in his chair from the faint rustle of fabric, and take a sip of something in a mug ceramic enough to ting faintly as it was set back down._

"Mr. Corbell, let me be very clear. I think you're the wrong man for this job. I think PTMC is playing reckless games with the lives of every colonist between Mercury and Pluto with this little stunt. But they've got the ear of the UEG for now and whether I like it or not your track record right now is one facility better than ours."

_Oh shit, had that dropship been from the Potemkin? No wonder Roth sounded so civilly furious._

"Since you ask, Tyco was in the middle of a training exercise with post MR-0331. All thirty five cadets and fifteen NCOs have been out of communication since the MN-0012….'incident'. Once our communication keepalive from that base went dead, all other guardposts and the main base manually shut off all communications and intiated our standard security protocol of only communicating via tightbeam laser with an elaborate challenge-response system. All attempts to retrieve our missing men have ended…poorly. It appears whatever has happened to the guardpost has set its defenses active, meaning anything that approaches it is fired on, precisely as if we were in a state of unconditional warfare. We are keeping an exclusionary zone clear."

_Double oh shit. I threw myself up on Jerome's field of view, waving my hands to get his attention. And sprayed my words across the side of the display rather than breaking in vocally._

_"(TRANSMITTER WORKING? WITH CLEARANCES ~66% CHANCE TO CRACK IN, BUT ONLY GET IN ONCE. BALL OK FOR EVAC.)"_

_If this was what I hoped it wasn't, I was betting that long-forgotten languages might get me in the door over laser communications. Couldn't kill the defenses, but I might get an approach window for a VIP and a personnel we might find ourselves in the center of a shitstorm of hostile fire, but we knew the job was dangerous when we took it._

"Acknowledged, Colonel. I have PTMC overrides and a large section of AI devoted to computational cracking. If you can supply us appropriately high-level clearances to masquerade as an inspection tour from a ranking officer and a prisoner transport, current confidence level is over 66% for nonviolent insertion."

_Ouch. I could see Jerome wince. Innuendo aside, that was a little too clinical. What was he supposed to say, though? "We'll bring them out one way or another"? There probably wouldn't be time to scoop up the dead, honestly, giving the lie to "nobody left behind". And if the drones had been attacked, odds are they would've fired back. There might not be anybody left. Nobody wanted to hear that, not even if part of their job was to plan for the contingency._

"Sir, I know how big this is. I frankly don't expect to make it out alive from many more of these, but I'm an Io graduate, my dad busted rocks for PTMC in the Belt for 30 years, and all my family was in Buenos Aires. Even if I don't make it out of there, I'll make sure nothing else nonhuman does and everything living and human can."

_Jerome sounded tired and old but earnest as hell. All 'confidence level' bullshit aside it was a pretty fair policy statement. There was a pause that grew longer. The background of the transmission hissed faintly and I heard a faint ping from the Colonel's end just as a mental ping alerted me that somebody had pulled our file again from our office site. Communications chaos aside, the military had their own backup systems and ways of punching requests through. Jerome was smart enough to hold his tongue and I had my image hold up a folder with a little Pyro icon on it. He nodded and let out a breath quietly._

"…Son, you don't sound like no soulless corporate merc to me. Your file looks mighty impressive, and I see you're hot-seating one of those Io do-everythings. And you may be my best hope to get my boys out. I'll get the clearances."

_Fucking score! I silently waved pom-poms in an explosion of display glitter and fireworks._

"And I'll get you an escort on the way in, and on the way out for your shuttle. Even cover your back from up here. But one thing needs to be crystal clear. I see drone ONE come out of there in anything but pieces, I give the order and we light up our primaries. No matter what."

_I'd always kind of wanted to see that. Just not from underneath. Not that we'd have the chance to appreciate it before the rock slagged away under that kind of pounding. Lord, what I could do with engines that big…_

"Colonel, I appreciate it. All of it. If we manage to get back control I'll laser back up on this frequency. Standing by…"

"Go kick some ass, son. Roth out."

_A gigantic slug of information slammed itself into my databanks before the laser snapped off. I had the codes I needed, enough biometric data and profiles to be able to force-feed Jerome's iris pattern into the system as a brigadier general and tell it that the Hamster Ball was already scheduled as a transport. If I could get into their systems to begin with, of course. With a grin I dressed my image in a military uniform and snapped to attention, having it put the folder back away with just enough of a bend to display cheeks and cleavage._

_"That went well. Want to tell Hamster?"_

"As soon as I shove my tongue back in my mouth. Open something up for me."

_Teasingly, I opened a button or two, then the channel._

_"(You're on. General.)"_

"Jerome to Hannah. Good news. We're still breathing. Better news, you'll have an escort."

"Cut the shit, boss, and tell me the bad news. Other than the obvious."

_As pleasant as ever. I made a face. Oh well, at least I wasn't having to run the shuttle via remote takeover, which was what I'd half figured on having to do._

"Standing room only for your passengers, if they're alive. About thirty three percent chance we'll have to go in slugging under fire. Paranoid overwatch ready to slag us all down if something comes out that's not a drone. Just another day at the office."

"….You have no idea how glad I'm going to be when both of you assholes gravity-sling insystem and let me get back to my normal patrol. NO idea. I've got your six but if you expect me to do much with it you're three bricks shy of a wall. Ball OUT!"

_That was when I made a mental note to buy her a pallet of yogurt rodent treats when we got out of this._


	16. Cashing the Bluff Check

Chapter 16: Cashing the Bluff Check

"Ain't no use in diving  
What's the use in jiving  
Straighten up and fly right  
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top." -Nat King Cole

I meant every word I'd said. To Roth, to Hamster, eternally to Jenny, even to Dravis. But that sort of thinking had no place in the world of daring and reflexes. The problem was that that kind of thinking had time to creep right back in when you were expected to sit meekly and be escorted in. Judging by Jenny's uniform we were just waiting on the escort.

"Got eyeballs on our friends yet?"

_"It's the damndest thing…I STILL can't see that cruiser on anything but visual. No additional data. I don't know if it's their bubble running so close to the hull that the field gradients stick fingers in my eyes or what…or if they really do have that kind of masking. As for the escorts…wait, I see 'em. Oh! Fuckers!"_

My view filled with a close-up of a hatch on the underside opening, right between the rocket bells. Out of the cavernous bay dropped four sleek shapes that looked awfully familiar, in a diamond formation that rapidly split to flank the shuttle and us. Jenny pulled back her display to a tactical view and that was when I put two and two together from the shape and her reaction. Light assault, about 30 years old…Pyro-GLs. Nothing Roth would mind losing, and not much of an addition to our slugging force.

_"Like they didn't have anything newer."_

Her tone dripped sarcasm and I shook my head in amusement.

"Dear? We're expendable. So're they. You should take it as a compliment. Station readout?"

_"Pfft, nothing special. Standard inboard military lasers like we're supposed to pack, looks like spreadfire emitters outboard, after all it's easier to spread your nasty energy balls all over your own airspace than learn how to aim. One homing missile per hardpoint, standard electronics. Lord the UEG shoulda let 'em at least keep the missile pods in the design..."_

Professional disdain that I shared. In a real stand-up firefight they'd be glowing vapor by the time her hull started taking armor damage, but they were capable enough in a pinch to be useful support. I heard an audible click as Jenny switched in their hail.

"II-JNY-02, this is Rouge Leader, PTMC gave you flight clearance for that antique?"

The transmission cut into my comment, the tone that of every cocky young fighter jock everywhere . Amused, derisive, superior, always challenging. We were young once too, and I couldn't help but grin. Jenny's image grew fur and a tail and outright bristled with indignation, only half feigned. Neverthless, I was willing to bet I could scrag two of them before the second two could even react and neither of us was in a mood or priority to put up with too much shit.

"Jenny-Two to Rouge Leader, what's it like to have a ship that can only sing castrati? Please confirm station on PTMC shuttle, preferred your best two elements, and two on me."

Jenny gave me a long-suffering look but her fur smoothed over.

"Rouge confirms. Fire protocol, pops?"

Pops? Jenny snickered quietly in the back of my hearing.

"Try to keep from shooting off at first contact, will you? If we draw fire protect the Hamster Ball and fall back outside the zone. We're carrying enough armor to stand some hits. Don't shoot unless I do."

(_"They're gonna be a little gobsmacked when they see me fly without you in the cockpit, hon.")_

"Got it, Jenny Two, you've got dibs. ...Query precise mission parameters?"

That was the sound of a flight having been scrambled with no notice to 'do whatever the mercenary needs'. I owed Colonel Roth again for that, there wasn't time to bring them into the loop all the way.

"Rouge Lead, mission is to infiltrate guardpost with forged clearances as inspection craft, prisoner transport, and escorts. I will stage a ground infiltration through the pressurized section to recon and rescue any survivors. Evac of personnel will be via Hamster Ball, escorted back to Tycho or Potemkin depending on medical and military requirements. Two elements of Rouge will remain on overwatch and follow Jenny Two craft under autonomous direction. Ship AI may transmit commands; I very highly suggest you listen to them due to specialized sensors and background databases. I will attempt scientific readout on main guardpost controller and depending on results may be able to return control to Tycho or remotely disable all drones. Or I may need a rapid escort and evac as we blow the reactor in the case of overwhelming enemy activity. Copy?"

_("Comes right back to you, doesn't it?")_

Jenny was dressed in the old uniform of the Io Institute at the time we'd almost graduated, looking a little wistful. It still stabbed me in the gut to see her like that but it was an old pain as well as an old uniform, easily ignored.

"(High signal-to-noise verbal ratio. Hard to forget.)"

"Infil, on-foot recon and rescue, on-foot science analysis of controller with Jenny-Two, Rouge Flight, and Potemkin on overwatch, exfil dependent on results. Um, Rouge copies. Any background on enemy types?"

_"(They should know, it's their specification for the drones.")_

I shushed her and thought for a second.

"Stand by, Rouge Leader, transmitting available data. Hold one. (Your problem from here, dear. I could use a quick precis if you've got one.)"

The raspberry she blew me probably didn't make it over the air. Probably.

_"(You got it, Last Minute Charlie. OK. Maintenance contract with PTMC specifies a complement of basic maintenance drones. We're not likely to see any vacuum-based rock borers this time, but things with moving parts."_

"What a relief."

_"Right, until you remember the briefing. You do remember it, don't you?"_

She threw up an image of a slab-sided green thing in my field of view. Twin sensor stripes in a menacing red painted vertical lines on either side of the prow of the nose and two big swingarms hung from either side, each bearing what looked like a double claw. Jenny rotated the image, most of the mech seemed like it was support for the swingarms. It raised a disturbing memory of that last fragment of transmission from poor MD-1031, whoever he'd been, and the way it'd ended.

"More or less. What am I looking at?"

Her tone was matter of fact, dumping information without any particular spin or added understanding. She probably was reading it a few moments before she spoke it, we'd see them live all too soon.

_"Maintenance mechs. Outboard points of the claw are synthetic diamond cutting tips down to an edge a few molecules thick. Fine enough to reshape your cornea. Tough enough to reshape my hull given leverage. Inboard points are diagnostic tools, nothing weaponized. Soldering iron, spot torch. Designed with 'reduced acoustic signature for low-profile facilities access' which is more my problem than yours, but listen carefully anyway."_

Charming customers. Rip me apart like a can of Spam and I wouldn't even hear them coming. A nod and the next image flashed up. It was for a change something asymmetrical, a high-visibility-red body with a gigantic claw dangling off one side and a stubby laser box mounted to the other. Jenny panned it around, showing me the thruster nozzles on the back, front, and sides. Interesting….designed for use outside the standard PTMC rail system, apparently.

_"Moving on. These are tagged as secondary lifters and apparently tasked by the controller to operate in pairs or trios…pick up cargo containers off the transports headed toward the main base and scan them. Or open them. Or open fire. They pack a nasty chemical-pumped laser…either rapid-fire shots or continuous-wave. Flux density, extrapolating from the blueprints…"_

She sounded understandably distracted. I couldn't justify taking my hands off the controls just before our drop, so I settled for a thumb-caress over the back of the ordinance stick.

_"...Call it armor-scarring. Or scorching if the shielding attenuates it. Stop that. We may see a couple in pressurized areas for supply movement. Don't piss 'em off. Next up…something PTMC's catalog calls an 'Internal Tactical Droid'. They're kind of puny."_

Small relief. I peered dutifully at the image of the blue pumpkin-seed shape that rotated across my field of view. The thing looked like mostly one big sensor package on top of a standard set of linear accelerator motors for the rails, with a couple multi-barreled guns strapped to either side. Not for the first time I reflected that our definitions of puny were probably alarmingly different.

_"Counter-rotating Vulcans….small-caliber, not more than a second or two of fire each. Hold on…there it is. They're supposed to quickly suppress intruders…"_

"…like me…"

_"….like you…and if they can't or they're outgunned they'll retreat for support and alert whoever they can. Like the Marines this place is normally packed full of. If you hear an audible alarm from them, the capacitor bank is on the underside of the body just behind the front sensor package. Your laser pistol ought to be able to one-shot them if you aim right. And please do. Other than that…I've got data on some sort of secondary mobile controller, heavily armored against rockfalls and the like. But it's unarmed, shouldn't be an issue unless you stub your toe on it. Not to say there's more down there, but I don't have complete military databases on their standard complements, just PTMC maintenance records. Talk to Roth if we make it out, floor plans would help. I still can't see through this rock in that kind of detail for _shit_."_

"And I'm not stupid enough to want to fire a guided missile down through a guardpost for Tycho."

I agreed emphatically. The list of ways that could go wrong was staggeringly long and the list of ways it would help was shorter than Jenny's patience.

_"Good to hear. Hell, if there's space down there for wingtip clearance and I don't seem like I'm about to suck anything through the fans…"_

She sounded wistful, hopeful. I sighed and shrugged.

"Be nice to stay lazily chair-bound and let you worry about the random skin piercings. Call that when we get there. Gimme a channel to the Pinkies."

_"Girl can dream. Open."_

"Jenny-Two to Rouge elements, confirm database assimilation and final departure check."

"Rouge Leader copies for Rouge elements. Lead the way."

No more stalling….time to go. I took a deep breath, feeling my heart start to race again, and squeezed the stick. A simple approach path, down from geostationary orbit with the Potemkin backstopping us…what could go wrong? The twin Pyro GLs fell into formation, above and behind, leaving us the point of an arrow and Hannah's shuttle and her two escorts hanging further back and off to the side. Out of the line of fire…of the guardpost, of the Potemkin. Nice and leisurely…we weren't in a hurry, our mission was legitimate. My skin itched all over, going nice and slowly into the jaws of danger wasn't what you'd call my natural instinct. Jenny threw an abruptly cartoonish image of herself in the corner of my vision, a surefire indication that she was working on something fiendishly complex and didn't have the time to spare for niceties.

_"Transmitting. Dish is up. Fuck, no ack. No open channels. Coded ID isn't opening up any responses. It's getting through but…it's like it's not listening to what I'm telling it…"_

Talk about things I didn't need to hear. And the missile lock light was something I didn't need to see, despite its red glare in what I saw. I kept my hand steady on the stick. She'd tell me if there was a launch. We were legitimate. I was a brigadier general on a scheduled inspection tour. If she could fake the scheduling before we got inside the free-fire zone. Then the image winked out entirely and I started to get concerned. The surface loomed ever larger; I could make out the crater wall and the path through it that led to 'our' outpost, visible as a little rectangle from this height. The missile lock light gave way to a blinking picture of a quartet of Mercury missiles, fast enough and packing enough punch to put a pretty big crimp in our day. Of course, if we dodged those, there were always the energy weapons.

"Talk to me…"

_"Shaddup. Oh shit I hoped I wouldn't have to do this. Prep for evasion."_

Obiediently I grabbed a breath and pushed downward, straining my diaphragm against whatever she might find it necessary to do. My display changed to a tactical plot, our position shown against the free-fire zone of the outpost, and as we crossed the line the station lit up with a LAUNCH indicator in red. I hardly had time to notice it before I felt a gigantic upward kick in the ass and at the same moment saw the lines on the plot between the outpost and our icon draw outward past both elements. The missiles had missed us, but our escorts were almost crossing into the zone and the tac plot showed a plasma cannon on the roof of the outpost coming online. The lock indicator strobed red and I tensed myself to return fire down onto the missile batteries.

_"GOT THIS!"_

Came the strained shout. As our escorts crossed the line and my heart crossed my throat, the tac plot vanished again and the missile lock light stopped flashing and stayed off. An unfamiliar voice came over the channels, saccharinely synthetic, and Jenny's image came back into view, once more fully dimensional. She looked as disheveled as I'd expect.

"Welcome to Outpost MR-0331, Brigadier General Corbell. You have immediate landing clearance for main entryway."

I sighed; steering for the area highlighted in blue on the display Jenny was showing me and bringing us into a flared and more or less precise landing. My escorts remained hovering above and behind me, positionally a bit twitchy but understandably so. Hannah and the Hamster Ball remained about a mile back, far enough not to catch stray fire if it came to that, but for all the strategic sense it made I would've felt more comfortable with the extra bulk of friendlies just a little closer. An eight-wheeled flatbed sat in the approach route, big balloon wheels an incongruous touch of familiarity, but nothing moved in the crisp shadows of vacuum between Jenny and the irised entryway of the squat entry building for the outpost.

"You wanna talk about that?"

I asked, just a little sardonically. Her image glared at me and tried to brush hair back into place with a sigh.

_"Yes. This shouldn't be happening like this. But maybe I'm wrong. I'll know when you come back. Good luck. I'm watching you. I love you. And nothing will keep me from being there if you need me if I have to rip the wings off to do it."_

"I know. I wish there were words."

The canopy hissed open, residual air from the lunar station puffing outward, crystalline, and I took my last breath of vaguely cookie-scented air before Jenny cut off the feed into my suit and cut her override of my helmet. It was strange to see the cockpit instrumentation through a neutral visor, and with a sigh I stood up in the seat and jumped easily down to the melted-smooth regolith beneath the skids, bending my knees to take the mild shock of the landing. Gravity was down, mass wasn't. Once again I had the oddest feeling, just before I broke contact with her, of a vast wave of emotions sweeping over me like a strange wing. Pique the sharp leading edge, overwhelming love and tenderness too big to encompass, soft and fluffy in their passage, and a terrible certainty and grim determination the grey pinion feathers. I shook my head as I rose back erect. I'd gotten that weird sense once before today already and I knew the color of my own mind well enough to doubt its origin with me. This was a day when everything was starting to go tits-up. Strange things were afoot. Jenny was being cryptic….hell, maybe I was still in shock. Good time for the artificial calm it created.

"Comms check. Relay anything non-private to Rouge please."

Deep breath. Without looking down I flicked the switch on the rear of the laser pistol riding on my hip to position two. Wouldn't get many shots out of the charge that way, but taking on armored drones with a handgun was a lousy idea anyway and if it had to happen I wanted all the advantages I could get. The plasma cannon on the building tracked down, maintaining a bead on me as I approached the iris. Who had time to be intimidated?

_"Jenny copies, General Corbell. Rouge monitoring."_

Hands moving with the pants seams. Long strides. You could almost hear the drumming if you let your mind drift to the past. Without breaking pace I let the retinal scanner's fanned beam pan over my face through the visor and the outer door of the airlock irised open just in time for me to slip through. Any delay and I would have smashed my helmet into it. One gamble paid off….but I couldn't let myself look backward as the metal sphincter slammed closed and barred me from my love. The airlock was big enough for a small squad of armed men-unsurprisingly-and I stood ramrod-stiff in the middle of it, trapped and waiting.

"Welcome, Brigadier-General Corbell."

Uttered the artificial voice once more, a faint trace of echo to it letting me know that Jenny was transmitting it onward. Everything I heard…well, at least there'd be a record. I resolved to make my last words something at least amusing.

"Please stand by for decontamination and pressurization."

I could see the air fog inward from a multitude of nozzles but…as any good Lunar colony boy should…I still waited for the green light to illuminate the far door before I cracked my visor. Damn air smelled actinic and dry again just like Shiva. Apparently the standard PTMC filtration system would be playing merry hell with my sinuses.

"General, internal security will escort you to the prisoners for your scheduled transfer."

Wonderful! Wait, what? Before I had a chance to ask about it the inner door irised open and I found myself staring into a red sensor and right down more gun barrels than your average paranoid neighborhood could boast. Stick to the plan….grace under fire...trust my eyes in the sky. Besides, if it was gonna fire, I was already dead.

""And you must be my tour guide. Son, I'd shake your hand. If you had a hand. If you were alive. Now why don't you back off and give a man his personal space?"

As last words, they weren't bad. To my amazement the drone emitted a cheerful cheep and backed off a few feet before turning around and moving at a measured pace through the antechamber. As words that weren't my last, they were surprisingly better. I noticed the room in a bit of a hysterical daze. Cut out of dark regolith and polished to an absolute mirror finish, there were two large recesses to either side of the far door in which floated identical drones to my little escort. As I stepped through the iris of the airlock it closed behind me but the only movement was my drone's crossing the room and halting in front of the other door. I walked toward them, trying to keep my cool and act like a stuffed shirt and as I came abreast of the flanking pair they both cheeped in unison and slipped six inches up on their rails, holding there. I glanced left…glanced right…and for the hell of it returned a crisp salute.

"At ease, mechs."

Vaporize my head if they didn't cheep once more and drop back to their former position.

("Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.")

I subvocalized, not moving my lips. Was that normal? Could they hear me? Were they-Kali help us all-sentient? All was quiet. I didn't like that. The next door slid open as normal to reveal the obligatory entry hallway, decorated with PTMC logos as the generous benefactors and the UEG stylized globe as the generous occupants. Plaques of famous military figures, none of who I knew or gave half a damn about, and red lighting coming up through the floor to make the place look vaguely Martian. I didn't know the point of it and wasn't about to ask, because behind the reception desk at the end of the corridor squatted a brown-mottled behemoth, thick armor plating scarred by prior hard use. It listed slightly to the left at the end of its rail, periodically overbalancing to the left and growling back upright again. Fresh craters pocked its surface, paint and plating splashed away by what looked like small arms fire from the sort of laser rifles or plasma pistols that Marines might carry or be able to retrieve from the armory. Enough rounds had struck home on one point of the surface that half of a plate had been spalled away and I could distantly make out titanium 'bones' and wiring beneath. Oh, I recognized that mech from telemetry and experience. Built on the chassis of the green laser borers we'd had so much fun with, this was the one that launched twin concussion missiles and had vastly more armor. And it had its scanner eye straight on me. You never appreciated ordinance until you were on the wrong end, and those missile bores looked the size of my head.

In my ear I heard Jenny suck in a breath before speaking. The number of times I'd been this glad to hear anything from her were countable on one hand.

_"Nonstandard. Keep left, standing by on interdict. Drones programmed to mimic behavior of personnel at facility-brass shine."_

Obediently I altered my path slightly to the left, pacing down after the little drone in a measured pace ever closer to the big brown thing. The back of my neck prickled as the distance decreased. Would I hear the thump as a missile spat out or would Jenny sense the launch first and shoot through the airlock's doors, ripping ordinance down a path inches beside me to take out my foe? The blue drone came to a halt by the big brown one and I came to a halt in front of the desk.

_"Data transfer, nonstandard pattern. I shouldn't recognize it."_

Great. Chess pawns probably felt this way. The drone floated up and behind the larger one and then accelerated out of sight down to the left branch of the circular corridor behind the desk with a zipping whine, leaving me standing there facing down something broader across the 'shoulders' than I was tall and capable of turning me into chunky red salsa with a mechanical cough. When in doubt…brazen it out.

"Listen, son, if you think I can run that fast…you tell that guide to get its shiny metal ass back here. I want my work crew and I want 'em here on the double."

I brandished my finger at the excavator drone, wishing I had the firepower of a pumped-fusion squad support weapon instead of just a stubby claw-like fingernail and begging silently for the gesture not to be taken as hostile. The drone regarded me impassively until I heard the outpost's systems answer me.

"Please wait, General. Scheduled prisoner transfer in progress."

"Keep me appraised. Tell 'em who's here for them, that ought to get some cooperation."

And hopefully reduce any fighting back….IF the drones were really going to peacefully retrieve them. Jenny would tell me if anything was going wrong…if she could tell.

_"Potemkin telemetry shows large movements through Maintenance toward Detention."_

Assuming that wasn't a massacre in progress this was all going well. Too well. Ride the advantage…

"You. Move aside. You're not helping here and I have work to do. Go help with the prisoners."

Coming around the desk at a measured pace, I pushed insolently on the armor plating. Man mastered machinery. Man built machinery, gave it purpose. And could not falter in the face of overwhelming force-like horses, who were big enough to refuse to obey and make their refusal stick, the key was to be confident, firm, and never give the idea that you could be disobeyed. The mech rumbled at me, so deep I could feel it through the soles of my boots more than hear it, but drifted back with a low growl from its induction motor and-with a last sensor-eye sweep before pivoting ponderously on the rail-slowly accelerated off and around the corridor to the right. Behind the desk, the floor-sunk drone rail ended a few feet short of the actual consoles and there was a folding chair of local manufacture slung there. I plopped down into the chair with a clatter and a sigh, listening to the announcement overhead with a vague sense of amusement and sweating so hard I could feel it dripping through my chest and back hair.

"Attention prisoners. Scheduled prisoner transfer is pending. You are being released for work detail under the authority of Brigadier General Jerome Corbell to board designated PTMC transport Hamster Ball at main entrance. Your compliance and cooperation are required."

Felt kind of good to hear, if I was honest. It was nice to have something going right even for a scant few minutes.


	17. Never Get Out of the Car

Chapter 17: Never Get Out Of The Car

"Standing there alone, the ship is waiting.  
All systems are go-are you sure?  
Control is not convinced  
But the computer has the evidence.  
'No need to abort.' The countdown starts."

-Peter Schilling

_It was a good thing nothing down there had any kind of sophisticated sensors to detect Jerome's pulserate or vocal stress, or he'd probably already be under fire. But that didn't bear thinking about. The base systems were working perfectly, dealing with a high-level dignitary and squawking to summon the highest-ranking Marine to meet him in person. Given that the roster I had managed to pull didn't list any active personnel and that the comm link to the main base was down, that left the system in a state of what I could only call frustration. Nevertheless, the rudimentary assistance system was working as designed and I was glad I wasn't still alive, because not only would I have been sweating my ass off but things were going to be awkward enough to explain as it was. I'd talk to him on the way to Mercury...we'd have nothing but time and I didn't want to clutter his mind with data that was unnecessary for his short-term survival. And it let me put the inevitable off for a few more precious moments. I wouldn't claim I wasn't afraid of what it would change. But at least for now he was safe and at a console. That had potential._

_"Query console access, floor plans and current drone complement."_

_I said, loudly enough for the Rouge pilots to hear me. I was in the system, sort of, but having to mumble under my breath in a language I thought I'd never use again to stay there. The encryption had been updated to run in an entirely different base language and if I were more bloody fluent I could puppeteer the system as easily as I could talk to any human or terminal….but fucking up a translation now would set off all kinds of alarms and the last time I'd spoken that language before today's cursing at Shiva was before I'd died. Long, long before. In a childhood that I didn't recall _until_ I died. Well, it was why I got the big checks._

_Jerome got in via simple eye scan and spent a few nervous moments poking through the menus before pulling up a map as part of the standard facility orientation. It was faster to grab it via my little camera on him than it was to grab it as he accessed it from inside the system, so I did that gratefully. But I still couldn't see movement…there had to be a better way._

_"Rouge Lead, crosslink Potemkin telemetry on this channel. Specify continuous scan, standard coding. Query Potemkin SIGINT possible to dump controller running code to main desk terminal, procedure via channel through Rouge Flight."_

_I could see Jerome's hands pull up off the keyboard, waiting for my further instructions. Oh please, oh please! I could handle deconstructing rapid-fire code scrolling across the camera's field of view and chunking it into the appropriate source files to read out here. I could handle that a lot easier via the camera than by the Potemkin slugging me hard enough to scorch paint with a lousy commo laser again, because I couldn't risk a slip of the tongue in finagling these damned base systems. It was getting easier the longer I did it, though, but still not to the point where I trusted myself enough to hand it over to whatever set of processors ran my linguistic subconscious._

_It was the work of only a moment to convert the three-view map into a plausible fully three-dimensional outline of the facility, and with a pleasant sort of chirp I became aware of some facts I'd always known about-the sure sign of an external data dump. I let them route into place and it wasn't more than a second or two until I had a clear picture of every drone that the Potemkin's sensors could see and fuzzy lifesigns to boot. They were converging on the life signs from all directions, down in the rocky tunnels of the heart of the outpost. The first of what looked like a security drone rounded the corner and a group of ten lifesigns separated from the main group. They flashed. The drone flashed. One lifesign flashed out. The others flashed again, and the drone moved away rapidly back toward the main body of moving drones but blinked out before it could reach them. I could hear the broadcast of attack and its request for reinforcements echoed over the internal systems but…if I squelched it, they'd go on to attack the rest of the drones, and there was no way they knew how many they were facing. And the drones might go on to exterminate all the survivors and then come after Jerome. Letting the call go out was safest, but it wasn't my call. Before I could open my mouth to say something to Jerome and the other pilots, that damned assist system cut in and preempted me._

"Brigadier-General Corbell, ten prisoners have escaped and are resisting transfer. One neutralized."

_In the time it took for it to say that another drone had come around the corner. It registered as a swingarm. The people icons flashed. The swingarm flashed. And kept coming. It'd go through them like an artillery shell through tissue._

"PATCH ME IN, DIRECT PUBLIC ADDRESS."

Jerome roared, standing upright and clenching his fists. He knew as well as I did what was likely to happen to the other resisters.

"Acknowledged."

Said the voice, so sweetly, so saccharinely.

"STAND DOWN!"

_I could hear it from every audio pickup in the system at once, something that gave me a bit of a headache until I stopped listening to them. Man didn't raise his voice often but when he did it would rattle dishes and windows._

"EVAC IS HOT, COMPLY WITH DRONE TRANSPORT!"

_And in the time it took him to say that four of the remaining ten lifesigns had blinked calmly out. Another five people dead, seen by cold telemetry. Probably hacked to pieces. Quiet rage burned within me and I called up the schematics of the emergency escape hatch once more. I could pry it open with fire and get in there…but it would be interpreted as an attack on the base. More dead, including Rouge flight and Hannah, and Jerome…honestly the only one who really mattered to me in the long run. I squelched my homicidal impulses for later unleashing and got back on the comm._

_"Telemetry shows five being herd…"_

"Brigadier-General Corbell, five escapees have been neutralized and the remaining five are under custody. Do you still require use of the public address system?"

_For a moment I thought Jerome was going to put a laser bolt into the console, but he unclenched his hands and simply said yes, pausing a moment before going on. I didn't even know if he'd heard me._

"You are being transported to Tycho Base for medical evaluation, debriefing, and details on your work assignment."

_Playing it cagey in case the assist system was set up to detect suspicious phrasing. I couldn't tell and didn't want to find out._

"The situation is contained, I repeat, CONTAINED. Do not attempt further resistance or onsite PTMC personnel and UEG Potemkin will be authorized to use force to ensure compliance. Brigadier General Corbell out."

_Playing it clever. They'd get doctors, questions, and the Potemkin was on station. I just hoped they were smart enough to understand what the hell was going on. Judging from the way the lifesigns were clustering into the middle of the encircling drones, nothing was going badly wrong, which was a welcome change._

_"Twenty nine lifesigns showing on active scan. No further by, evaluating controller readout here."_

_I could almost feel his anguish. Just slightly more than half of the original complement left, five freshly gone. Lately it seemed like all human life was especially valuable._

"I want all bodies loaded with the work crew. Let them handle burial detail."

"Acknowledged, Brigadier-General Corbell."

_If I really tried I could probably pull up the security camera feeds, but it was risky…so risky. I didn't think anything useful would come from them other than scenes of carnage and horror. Maybe for emotional closure, but sure-hell not operationally relevant. Time for that later if we could bring this place back under UEG control. Fuck Dravis and his objectives, the goal was to secure, not destroy everything. At least it was for me, if it were possible. I was beginning to wonder. I spoke the lingo, could I work a little black magic? If I was given the chance. Morbidly I began to wonder how I would go about trying-I couldn't _not_ try-even if Jerome was doing his best to stop me after he heard what I had to say._

_"I speak this language. We need to talk but it'll keep. I may be able to get the facility back. Bringing in the Ball."_

_It was the simple matter of a moment to open the shared comm channel and tell Hannah to take up station at the entrance. Escorted by the two GLs, the shuttle came down in a slow swoop, a textbook-perfect approach as I flared thrust to hop backwards and to the side and give her landing room. That I didn't like, not for a second. With my guns no longer aimed square down the bore of that airlock and antechamber…_

_"Local security element confirming off overwatch."_

_Echoed that to Jerome too, so he knew. Worry, worry, fret fret, aren't those prisoners offloaded yet?_

_All I got back was a grunt, as his button camera showed him watching the dots moving up through the tangled nest of passages in one tight bunch. Whenever he shut up, things weren't good. But it would wait. Would have to wait. Would have to restrain my tendency for nervous chatter, trying to reassure him would only stress him out more._

"Hamster Ball confirming on station, locks mated."

_The shuttle sat with its standard PTMC-issue ass against the standard PTMC-issue airlock. That, at least, wouldn't be a problem. Nevertheless….I hopped once more, bringing me directly in front of the security craft. Through the frontal armor, through the cockpit, through the hull, through the passenger bay, through the airlocks…a twitch of my fingers harmonized the lasers to converge on the outer airlock door. I'd do what I had to to save him, if it took shooting through Hannah and an entire bay full of wounded marines in the process. Always have a contingency plan, especially the kind you don't want to have to use. I echoed Hannah's transmission through to our Pyros and Jerome as well and did my best to sit still, concentrating on keeping up the flow of dialog in a language that was becoming ever more familiar._

"And about damn time too."

_Jerome said, in his best impression of an impatient martinet. The dots were coming around that big curve and lord but I could hear it from his mike. Two secondary lifters came groaning around the rail, claws supporting a massive secured container, escorted in front by a perky little internal security drone, and another two lifters bringing up the rear. The escort went zipping over to hover a safe distance from Jerome as the lifters slowed to bring the great bulk carefully around the corner. Looked like a cargo container, but one built to military specifications and properly reinforced to house dangerous persons. Pretty impenetrable unless you had diamond-alloy teeth and a lot of spare time. There was something, speaking of gnawing, worrying at the back of my mind about relative treatment of captives but it'd keep. With a muted crunch the container was set down, blocking access to the rest of the facility. Even in one sixth gravity, it was a damn big thump and shook a little dust from the recesses. The two lifters in front-barred from retreat, now-split to either side and stuck their claws into part of the front, unhinging it somehow and letting it slide up._

_From the two alcoves, the drones came in to hang in front of the prisoners, ready to apply whatever crowd control seemed suitable. Jerome wasted no time in vaulting around the corner of the desk to stand where he could see and be seen inside the container. It….wasn't the prettiest of sights but I dutifully began relaying the video feed to our escorts and back up to the Potemkin. It reminded me of nothing so much as an abbatoir. Twenty nine people, alive. Several more, in pieces or whole. Shit, blood, and vomit liberally distributed throughout the interior and across the survivors, shaken as the container had been jostled. The survivors didn't look so hot, either. A few of them clinging to each other for support, be it moral or physical, a few vomiting in the corners, a dangerous many with that pale face and high flush that meant they were very much Marines and very much dangerous. And all poised to beat the shit out of my brave catboy if it weren't for four drones hanging there in the air._

"It's good to finally meet you."

_Opened Jerome, completely sincere. The impression I got from his audience was one of disbelief and anger, and growing suspicion that HE was behind what had happened to them. Dangerous as hell. My lasers were hot._

"I am Brigadier General Corbell and you are required IMMEDIATELY for a work detail at Tycho Brae to supplement non-automated defenses."

_For…? There was a lot I didn't understand about how he got results._

"After receiving proper medical care you will be individually evaluated for suitability. Burial detail will be handled in the traditional manner. Dramatic changes are coming, your cooperating is ESSENTIAL to make your return to Tycho smooth."

_I could see some of the smarter ones were starting to get it. I'm sure his eyes were pleading with them to listen, but more importantly I saw a few unobtrusive punches to arms to encourage attention._

"Your transport is a PTMC security shuttle docked outside. You will now board it in an orderly fashion. Bring the bodies with you. You will have the opportunity to ask questions later."

_Slowly, slowly. Comprehension. Dawning relief among enough of them to defuse the critical mass. He reached out to swat at the original escort drone, floating a few feet in front of him and guns outward. It turned around with an electronic chirp._

"Get these men on board that shuttle. NOW."

_Hissing smoothly, the two lifters took their place in the alcoves and the drones puffed into the back corners of the container to herd the survivors out. Interesting…I wondered how long they could operate off the rails with their meagre stock of propellant. Order began to coalesce as everybody began to pick up pieces and corpses. Their uniforms would never be the same, but nothing was being left behind thanks to military discpline and unit honor. A young-looking lieutenant led the grisly procession out of the container and past Jerome. Pausing, the leg she carried under her arm dripping blood slowly in the low gravity, she snapped a sharp salute to Jerome and didn't let her hand down until he returned it, looking proud._

_They filed past, the inner airlock door opening and closing behind them without drama. From my vantage point I could see them through Hannah's cockpit piling into her cargo area and taking their seats. Her head turned abruptly as she shouted at them and I had to throw a laser onto the cockpit to make out her words._

"Everybody stay the fuck shut up until we get the fuck out of this hellhole!"

_Didn't bother to relay that. Did, for the next slightly more official message._

"Hamster Ball has prisoners secured, twenty nine actives, proceeding with extraction to Tycho main pad."

_Thank God. One less hurdle. As the Ball lurched upwards on its thrusters I kept a close watch on Jerome. He was sickened, scared, but keeping on. As I knew he would. Pyro GLs in close formation, the trio streaked toward the center of the crater…and out of the engagement perimeter of the base defenses, which meant they were somebody else's problem now._

"That's all I need."

_He said to the drone brusquely, turning his back on it and settling his helmet on. I was so damn relieved to have him have his own air supply again…threw up a low-opacity mask of my own slightly frantic grin and a picture of the Ball as it settled toward the main landing pad._

("Get ready...")

_Goddammit! For what? Anything from a full-fledged assault to reclaiming the place…Hop. Cockpit facing the door, point-blank distance for the Vulcan or an entry. Pop the latch. Crystals puffed away as I let the air dump out. Worth it to have it open and waiting for him. Engines hot, building a bubble. Constantly draining from the lunar dust underfoot, but enough for movement, enough for cushion…_

_The inner airlock door opened as he approached. Shut behind him. Suction pumps began to suck out the air in force. No matter how much oxygen was in regolith, PTMC didn't waste what it could save and resell._

("Do it. Take the base if you can.")

_"Not yet."_

_I didn't countermand him without reason. This was a good reason. If I slipped up, if I got caught, if everything went live…I had a nightmare image for a moment. Him, as the pumps reversed and the inner door irised open, quick-drawing against those oh-so-helpful security drones, with the lifters heading in to slice and dice. Dramatic, heroic, I couldn't blow the outer door fast enough for him to get out, and would have to shoot around him , then try and cut away the door before the rest of the drones got to the entrance. It'd keep for another fifteen seconds, dammit._

_The outer door opened and he flinched back for a moment, not expecting me quite so close. I reminded even myself sometimes of a neurotic housepet, but whatever did the job. With a hand on my bow he vaulted up and into the cockpit with relative ease and I slammed the cockpit down and inflated the restraints with considerable savagery. A determined jump backwards and we were back on station with our Rouge escorts before more than a few seconds had passed._

"Glad to see you too, love."

_Jerome remarked, understanding completely. We were out of range of the defenses now...time to go to work._

_"JNY-02 to Rouge elements and Potemkin. Communication protocols decrypted. Attempting to reclaim computer systems, confidence level…"_

_Fucking dismal. Nasty paranoid streak in me insisted it would never work._

_"…eighty percent."_

_It was worth a try. Grimly I set about lying to the systems. Lying my ass off, trying to pass off my intrusion as a legitimate late addon to the transmission that said 'encrypt all protocols to this standard and don't listen to anybody after this'. Through the window that Jerome's access had opened in the system I was able to get in deeper and persuade the docile original programming. It was all going beautifully and it was with a deep sense of satisfaction I shot my last checksum into place on the reworked code and logged off perhaps half a minute later. The code would decrypt itself back to its original form and summon the secondary controller in for a reprogramming…burning a new backup for the correct data._

_"Well, that's got it. Tell them they can have their base back, no da..."_

_That was when everything went to shit. I'd just gotten the transmitter to point a commo laser at the Potemkin and transmit a status update, along with full internal feeds and their recordings, when it snapped off again after devolving to the former encryption, cutting off my access completely. The defenses were back online, this time actively hunting for targets. And I could see every active drone in the facility, through the Potemkin's eyes, heading for the surface entrance at speed._

_"Arty! Now!"_

_I shouted at Jerome. If those little fuckers got loose…they could go anywhere. We had a standing warning/threat from the Potemkin, time to call that marker in._

"JNY-02 to Potemkin, intrusion detected, breakthrough imminent, request IMMEDIATE fire support. Laying down suppressing fire. All active Rouge elements go hot."

_Jerome immediately snapped, and I patched it through. Looks like we were going to find out how much propellant they had loose. This was his show now-we had space. A twitch of his hand against my back and I pirouetted, spitting a pair of missiles down toward the airlock while building speed for an attack run. The GLs opened fire as the missiles hit home, drowning out the airlock structure in a brief blossom of light and shrapnel but their paltry spreadfire cannons not doing much more than vitrify lunar dust. The blast was clearing, the entrance was damaged but I could see the signatures of drones beginning to surge through anyway. A stab with the lasers, unasked, and an internal drone evaporated into sparkling droplets of metal vapor. Ape a salute, will you? Another second of the sustained hum of lasers…lord did they make me almost lose pace…as Jerome took me through a curving path over the entrance and one secondary lifter found itself without a claw. The GLs weren't hitting shit unless it was by accident, and we sure as hell couldn't do this alone. Not with that missile hulk almost…._

"Potemkin to all elements. Radiation warning. Blast warning. Primaries hot. Firing in five."

_Lords and martyrs not now not now too close not here! I gathered my muscles and flung myself further along the loop we were on, eating away the distance to Tycho and more importantly building it behind us and what was about to happen._

"Four."

_The GLs were making credible speed back up toward their mothership, skittering off to the sides to avoid getting caught between an irresistible force and a very disintegratable object._

"Three."

_Thank god the Ball was down and its escort was making double time back to get behind the bulk of the Potemkin as well. I kept building velocity and altitude, trying to get above the damn thing in its orbit and put part of the Moon between us and what was about to happen._

"Two."

_Ballistic now, not quite orbital velocity but we'd not decay for quite some time. It'd have to do. I ran the engines past the sanity stop and up to full military power, throwing the blinking 125% percent up in red across Jerome's display, and beside it a percentage indicator of shielding strength, growing as fast as I could make it. Fuck the core temps, could bleed the excess off later._

"One."

_I put up an image of what my sensors were seeing and the gunnery camera feed on the Potemkin, being relayed to us on the encrypted link. We watched, fascinated despite ourselves, as the drones began to spill out across the Lunar surface._

"Firing."

_And the world went white._


	18. Dead Pilot's Society

Chapter 18: Dead Pilots' Society

He's a model saint, but they say he's insane  
He lives in a crate, in the wind and the rain  
He had it all, but he threw it away  
One mistake, diyo day

-JJ Grey & Mofro

The scale of the jobs you did sometimes didn't register until later. I knew I would have a hell of a case of the shakes once we got back up to the station. Cold sweats, legs and bowels turned to water, the whole bit. Adrenaline burning off. I'd be seeing the inside of the detention chamber for quite a few nights to come, assuming I got much sleep at all, but you kept going as long as you had to. Life balanced on a knife edge again, Jenny's overdue sitrep no doubt coming down soon…and then it'd be lots of waiting enroute to Venus. But while we were between the Potemkin's primaries and the Lunar surface, damn straight I wasn't going to let anything get in the way of good old fashioned escape and evasion. More to the point, let anything get in the way of Jenny's reflexes. Battleships didn't use their primaries much now that there wasn't much by the way of war going on. It wasn't something you wanted to use in atmosphere, on a planetary surface…really, in an environment where there was anything electronic or organic to be affected by some severely high-energy gamma rays.

Needless to say I was watching the display with a sort of morbid fascination when the positron beam fired. It was all over in a couple of seconds, but…how did you describe something like that? To see lunar rock, the sort you remembered all too well as a kid, splash and flow like water, and just…vanish? The only thing I could possibly make sense of it as was as if somebody had dropped a cannonball into a bucket and turned the water to solid just as the ball had sunk and the temporary crater gaped wide. A flash, a slump of the surface inward, and that was it. The entire area glowed white and I sure-hell wasn't going to ask about radiation counts. Between the shielding trying to deflect what high-energy gammas had blasted through the lunar mass, and my own transparency to something that far up the energy level….well, just another hazard of the business. No drones were in sight, and the Potemkin's imagery in the corner showed nothing left of the outpost's tunnels or even central core…just irregularities in the rock strata.

I could feel the engines spin down to a normal level, then, as the red 125 winked out. Jenny's image winked into sight, raising the visor on a welding helmet, and the familiar forces of acceleration hit me as she lifted us out of our long ballistic plummet back to the surface, a long bending loop back around unasked to the crater.

_"No."_

"No?"

_"You can't have one."_

"Good god, what makes you think I want one? The Institute would revoke our charter, we'd be tried for crimes against humanity…"

I couldn't think of a single target it would be useful against. Other than the rest of these infected outposts...Jenny frowned thoughtfully.

_"But the two 'specials'…well, they're more survivable than that. I guess."_

Putting things off, a time-honored practice of man to woman and the reverse, ever since the second caveman had neglected to mention his experiments with the first caveman's mate. Petty matters like language and origin mysteries could wait, there was destruction to professionally estimate. And for all we knew there were stragglers…

The crater came into view.

No, there'd be no stragglers. There wasn't an outpost. There wasn't a lunar surface. Mirror-smooth and glowing still as the absorbed heat radiated out into the vacuum, nothing more than a deep indentation sat where the outpost had been. I whistled through my teeth, impressed despite myself. Say what you wanted for the devastation on Earth-and I was sure I'd be in shock over it when I had that luxury-the clinical removal of everything was somehow more heart-stopping than rubble and miles-wide firestorms.

"Now that….is a thorough removal of infestation."

_"Yeah."_

Jenny fired back, looking slightly regretful.

_"Problem is…imagine them doing that everywhere. Nevermind the colonies being irradiated, but you've taken out centralized resource gathering and distribution and undermined faith in that system. Can you imagine what an inefficient small-scale system will do to a solar-system-wide economy built on large-scale efficiencies?"_

Well, no, I couldn't. It would probably be bad if she was mentioning it.

"I'll leave that to you. I know, I know, we have to handle this as a PTMC internal matter and unless we go out in a blaze of glory…"

_"Gamma rays."_

"….whatever. They're not going to hand this over to the military. We've stepped on a lot of toes already, but this was at least their outpost and technically the final situation was resolved by their own forces at their own discretion."

I did understand institutional politics on an instinctual level. The sense of smell helped, if I was honest about it.

_"Potemkin wants you. Patching through."_

"Mr. Corbell, this is Colonel Roth. Does the situation look under control to your expert analysis?"

Dry, a little amused, a little relieved. Showed up the company merc with a demonstration of proper firepower. Hell, if we were far enough out of the shit for his ego to start coming through I was happy.

"Yes, Colonel, I believe the mine has been sanitized to PTMC's satisfaction. Officially I'm sure they appreciate your gracious aid. Personally, I'll be buying a lot of rounds when I get back from this run."

He wasn't the only one relieved.

_"Let's see…one beer for all of her crew will be most of our monthly gross…"_

("Shut up, dear.")

"We caught your transmission…there's a lot of us up here who may be standing you the drinks. Tycho says all the survivors will make it. You did good in there, son. Saved a lot of lives."

"_Magnificent. Heroic. You KNOW it'll be leaked to the holos as soon as more communications come back up. We'll be infamous."_

An odd look of sadness was on her face, something I didn't need to push about yet.

"Thank you, Colonel. I just wish I'd been able to somehow stop their jailbreak a little sooner."

"You stopped the rest of them from being killed, Mr. Corbell. That sure-hell matters. Listen. Your directive has you outbound, then inbound. I want you to know I put out the good word for you on the milnet. You won't see us but we'll be listening. If you need to, squawk on this frequency and somebody will hear."

A slug of data followed, which Jenny threw up briefly into my field of view before processing with a puzzled frown.

"I copy. And…thank you."

Powerful allies. Handy. Best left unneeded.

"No, Mr. Corbell, thank _you_. Good luck out there. Kick some ass for Rio. Potemkin out."

It couldn't've been more than a few seconds until the last of the GLs vanished into the hangars once more and the ship accelerated impossibly fast out of sight once more. This time Jenny whistled, shaking her head.

_"Like it was never there, even to my sensors. Swear to god that thing intimidates me. Where to, boss? We gotta talk. Badly."_

There wasn't a good time, but there wasn't time for anything. My stomach roiled in general dread. It was funny, the idea of some sort of solar collapse/riot or whatever was the worst-case scenario for this paled in comparison to bad trouble with Jenny. One was general, one was personal.

"Back to the station. Not going to lie, I probably don't want to hear this, but you know that."

_"Asshole. Not like you're making this any easier either. I don't want to tell you."_

I felt her shift under me, gathering way for an easy arc up and out. With a sigh I settled back and closed my eyes, taking my hands off the sticks and letting them rest open-palmed on the panels the sticks came through. _Making_ a moment for myself in the midst of all this.

_"I'm not human."_

"I know that. Something exotic from way out Saturn way, you said. The electric-blue hair, the elfin ears, the spare build. Plenty of genetically modified sorts out there, too far to be within range of enforcement of anti-tampering laws."

Jenny sighed, tsking at me. I could imagine her expression.

_"You forget you told me all about Raspberry. No. Further out than Saturn. A lot further. If it helps I didn't figure it out until, well, until I died violently."_

A splash of green against black, pinwheeling, pinwheeling away. My hands as they had been pressed up against this very canopy, screaming my lungs and throat raw in desperate denial, separated from her and her mortal wound by the cruel clear barrier of what was keeping me safe. A cold chill lifted every hair as the image of her pale face through the helmet came back to me and that last look….longing, angry, surprised…before her body fell to the rocky ground beneath the ship and I took wing to wreak my terrible vengeance.

Seventeen years ago, but you never really forgot. Not something like that.

"I…"

Couldn't talk, suddenly choked up with the memories. Couldn't think. If I hadn't failed Grand Strategy, I would've graduated the year before. Would've taken Jenny home to Earth, gotten properly married. Would've started our own mercenary outfit as we'd talked about since sophomore year, maybe in time started our own family.

"…I guess I'm still not…"

Not something. Couldn't think. Could barely get words out through the prickling of sweat down between my shoulderblades.

_"I know, love. It's changed our lives a lot. But this is something that'll do it again."_

What comfort there was, was from the sound of her voice. Seventeen years now I'd heard it like this, only four years from living, breathing flesh. Strange, that one would sound more natural than the other.

"Still listening."

_"Uh. Without going into too many details yet…I'm an alien. Was. Whatever. I was given a shitload of bogus memories…all the stuff I told you about my family and my childhood, mostly…and dropped here to learn of your culture until I could move within it. And then take steps to fuck it up pretty badly to weaken you."_

That gave me pause. A lot of pause. And many really disturbing implications that I didn't want to consider. Had twenty-one years with her been built on lies? Was it still a lie?

"Uh."

Not the most intelligent of comments. I squinched my eyes a little tighter, feeling a tear or two leak through them.

_"I told you I didn't want to go into it. I guess death released all the blocks before they were supposed to go. I will bet you seven figures of our nine-figure fee that you're wondering if everything was a lie, and no, I loved you then, I love you now, and if things had gone differently….I honestly don't know what would have happened when the blocks came down, how I would have changed, how WE would have changed."_

Twenty one years and you knew a person pretty well, truth or not. And the stress in her voice wasn't in the slightest artificial, that I could detect.

"You know I lo…"

_"Shut up, let me get this off my tits before you say anything that we both need to hear to stay sane."_

It was a week for being wound tight.

_"Everything became clear in that last moment. I had…everything. The artificial that had become real, the real that felt artificial, I could do everything, but I had no fucking TIME to do anything. There's a thing we can apparently do-big damn mystery to me, like waking up and finding you not only want to play the piano, your fingers remember how, when you've never played before!-that's some sort of mind transference. You remember we were running a full sensor test?"_

I thought back. I remembered the entire live-fire exercise that shouldn't've been live-fire at all. The cadets on both sides, from the Institute and whatever rival school it had been, backed heavily by the Jovian government, as part of their 'gentleman's agreement' to keep each other on their toes, would stage periodic pretend raids on each others' facilities. The higher-ups knew, of course, but kept it secret. The shadowy hands that had engineered weapons live on Io's attackers had been unexpected by both sides. It was a 'regrettable incident', an incident that had led to a mutually corrosive rivalry between schools, official embarrassment, representatives of the Jovian government installed at all training installations, and a terrific victory for the elements rebelling against the rule of law who were claiming these were nothing but terrorist schools and were proof of the UEG's illegitimate tyranny. I remembered the screams of 'cease fire' in the clear from both sides as the defense batteries of the Institute began responding to live ordinance with live ordinance of their own. I remembered not coming back in the Pyro once I'd taken off, and all that had led to. But I couldn't recall why we'd been working on the goddamned thing in the first place.

"No…listen, you don't need to tell me anything you don't want to, love."

_"The hell I don't. I've been sitting on this for seventeen years. Don't think I don't know how long you spent wondering if my voice coming out of this computer was just a last practical joke on you, regardless of what I was trying to say, how I was trying to manage, how I was trying to adjust. This matters now. If you can still trust me, please hear me out."_

I had no idea where we were. She was running too smoothly for the acceleration to give me any clues. With eyes closed it was peaceful, still smelling faintly of cookies. I was where I'd called home, talking with the one I called my love. She had never played me false, and although she sounded about three-quarters to tears herself, I kept silent, letting her say what she needed to.

_"Anyway. I thought about mouthing 'I love you' as the last thing I did. But, although I did, I didn't. You knew it, you know it, and it would've been kind of a waste of time. I'm sorry, you know my vicious practical streak."_

A strained chuckle, sounding a lot closer to a sob than I wanted to hear.

_"So I tried the mind transferrence thing. Hand on the hull, blasting everything I was into what I hoped was listening. I guess it's supposed to be done to a person, but…you were inside. Out of touch, out of time."_

Screaming in terror and rage and despair for both of us, for two lives shattered, when she couldn't.

_"You….you'd have a future. I didn't want to hurt you, didn't want my living lie to risk ever hurting you…"_

She paused for a moment, and I heard an audible sniff.

_"My first memory. My green blood, pinwheeling away into space. Seeing in stereo, through my eyes and, through the ship, somehow, seeing myself die. Knowing I'd betrayed our dreams by cutting the future decades we'd planned down to just a few more seconds. I….something happened. I don't know what. I went away for a while."_

She'd gone away, I'd gone more or less feral. Stolen the ship. After word had gone out and the defense batteries had switched to craft-crippling shots and the rescue ships had gone up to rescue the shaken cadets, I remembered the valedictorian of that class chasing me down in one of the lightly-armored trainers, trying to talk me down. I remembered being in no mood to listen. Blinded by grief and rage, I just wanted to curl up in some hidden spot and be left alone to die. I'd shot off the wings, then the tail, then methodically shot up the engines. He'd never fired back, only eventually crash-landed with grace. Wasn't until he'd climbed out of the ruined trainer and raised his suited hands in the air that I was willing to at least listen. The offer I'd been made by the UEG….well, I had precious little enough to live for, and the dire penalties hadn't fazed me in the slightest. And it would let me get revenge, and do so in the ship I'd shared with _her_.

"I remember. Bits and pieces of pictures of you on the screens. Words in your voice from the computer now and again. I never could fly that thing as well as I could after….you were always better at it. More dextrous. Until you finally piped up and told me you still loved me."

_"It wasn't easy, struggling to put myself together in a mechanical system. But I had the capacity and the drive. I KNEW you were there. I could feel you, more of that weird alien stuff, and if you were still alive, I had hope, I had something that I knew was real to work toward."_

We'd been both insane together for a lot of time, objectively considered. Wondering persuasion, sleepless nights. Hope making a substitute for logic.

"Not this sabotage thing?"

_"Fuck that sabotage thing!"_

Instant, unequivocal.

"_Fuck whoever I was supposed to be! I mean, it wasn't REAL to me! Mission's over when you're dead, right? Let my supposed people sabotage their own shit, I'm an Io graduate, a Saturn kid, and very much in love. That's the end of it. You know whose side I'm on. Yours. Always. Humanity's, I suppose, but if I had to pick between you and them, well. Yours. Always."_

If she was lying….if it was all a lie, there was nothing I could do to detect it, nothing I could do to change it. She'd been good enough to fool me for twenty one years, so I might as well take her words on face value, because she was either good enough to make me believe or telling the truth. But I could tell she was at the breaking point because she probably was figuring that I would be trying to penetrate successive deceptions….as was her stock in trade. Her tone was desperate.

"Whatever you were, Jenny, I love you. Loved you then, loved you now."

Simple as that.

"Alien, human, I really don't give a shit. You're my partner. Stuff that in your biological sensors and analyze it."

There was a long shuddery sigh from her and a moment of silence during which I felt the engines behind me vibrate to life. We must be at the station…but I still didn't need to open my eyes.

_"You'll forgive me if I'm a little neurotic about this for a few years yet. But I still haven't told you why this is important."_

….Which was true, and unusual.

"Yes, well…you've always been a little longwinded. I figure just let you run on long enough, you'll get to it."

A sound of outrage, fading to a sigh and an honest if shaken faint chuckle.

_"Remind me to thoroughly kick your ass later. I'll…OK, this is going to sound stupid. I don't want to tell you now. One traumatic revelation at a time, right? I want you to arrange for a spine lifter like we talked about when we got here. Unless you want to really do a sustained 4G run interplanetary. Fuck Venus, our 'new intel' means we need to get to Mercury. We need to get there fast, and you need to be in condition to fight and think. That doesn't mean eyeballs-in eyeballs-out pinned in this chair. I'm talking fast courier transport, something with a 4x or 5x multiplier. I'll make inquiries at Shiva while you ask Tawny."_

The thought of being able to get out and move around for a bit…save fuel for the end assaults, and a 'base' ship to return to…hell, even somewhere to sleep. Food more than low-fiber paste, drink more than concentrates...well, it wasn't a bad idea. Not a lot of civilian iron carried engines like that. Couriers, some executive toys. Not that we didn't lust after that kind of hardware, but regardless of what Jenny could finagle, the simple fact was that just one bubble generator with those specs was still bigger than the entire spaceframe. We were about the smallest thing out there to have the bubble drive, and consequently among the slowest. Then again, more space, more structural strength, more space for a bigger powerplant, the difference between 3 Gs to the occupants being our 9 external versus 15…speculation was _rampant_ on what the military was running these days. The Potemkin had moved off like it was pulling figures I didn't even care to contemplate, and that was with people sitting down at their duty stations in a normal oxygen atmosphere, no pressurized bolsters. And I had the feeling that in addition to practicality, there'd be the feeling of a warm body in my arms on the way, digging off old scabs from old mortal wounds in order to help save unified civilization, but while at least close to each other. God, what PTMC owed us went way beyond nine figures.

"You got it. Let's talk hostage rescue. You want to rely on local talent? Or…"

With a gentle thump we settled to the floor of the hangar and the engines spun down. I could follow the inevitabilities as well as she could at this point. We had a pilot who had done the job, who had no problem taking orders from us, quick in a pinch, ex-combat. We had blanket authorization. And now we were going to have our hands on something with a cargo bay big enough to accommodate a couple small ships, one way or another. An unknown had become a known…and there was enough risk that we couldn't justify introducing an unknown.

"Fuck."

I said, resignedly.

"We kind of have to, don't we?"

And opened my eyes again. The helmet view was as if I wasn't wearing it at all, or encased in the seat. I could see Jenny curled up on me, head against my chest and looking up at me, tear-streaked face smiling nevertheless. Her hand reached up to touch my cheek, then the entire view vanished into blackness as I felt the canopy hiss open and the bolsters deflate. We'd had our stolen moment. There'd be time for more. With a sigh I reached up and peeled the helmet off my head, blinking hard against the sterile light of the same hangar I was getting used to.

_("Hamster it is. Can't risk it otherwise. I'll tightbeam Tycho with a request to get her back here along with the relevant debriefing they have. Already into Shiva for sundry data and a hangar inventory, give me a couple minutes. Holding off on footage until you tell me how to scrub it and if you want to add a message. Boy will I be glad when we can get some us time again…")_

Wiped my eyes and scrubbed my face with my hands, trying to rearrange my features into some proper semblance of composure. Everything was the same, except it was all different. Quentin was peering over the edge of the cockpit and I shook my head at him.

"We're still full up on ordinance and fuel. Tycho is cleared, the grunts mostly made it out, Potemkin took out the base with primaries."

Nothing everybody probably didn't know by now, given the way the Ball had gone haring off with an escort, and given the sight of that fucking huge warty flying saucer hanging between the station and the surface and doing its level best to block the gamma rays with its own shielding.

"Outstanding, man."

He said, beaming with a joy I sure as hell wasn't feeling.

"You need anything from us?"

And now it got interesting.

"The Ball's going to be coming back here, same resupply. Kit out for interplanetary-but for christ's sake don't tell her until I do! If you've got a courier spine-lifter I need it, and I need Tawny on the horn or down here on the double. Also a replacement for a couple armor plates, check the maintenance computer for the specs."

His eyes went wide as he started to put the pieces together, at which I felt a tinge of satisfaction for having made my problems somebody else's for a change.

"Uh….right. Uh. Good luck, Jerome. Although you'll need most of it right here."


	19. The Hook of Revelations

Chapter 19: The Hook of Revelations

It is true that speed kills. In distance running, it kills anyone who does not have it.

-Brooks Johnson

_My god there was a lot to do.I was grateful as hell, it kept me from having too much of a chance to think. I needed to talk to Shiva, talk to Tycho, talk to Jerome-although I'd put the second half of that off rather nicely, in desperation-talk to my sensor records and figure out what the fuck had gone wrong down there, talk to the computer and tell it what plating I needed to replace the damn nose damage…and, frankly, anything else I could think of to do to avoid having to deal with what I was contemplating. I knew well enough what was going on now and was trying to pin down some theories about relative targetting and danger, but first things first. Running through the scan logs while I waited for a priority request to Shiva to process and return, one thing jumped out at me. The Potemkin had detected something in there with a spherical form factor and no real weaponry to speak of despite a surprisingly high mass reading. Strange…I threw that up against the PTMC maintenance database I'd 'borrowed' and riffled through its files until something matched. A secondary controller?_

_Well damn, that explained a great deal._

_A little movement analysis. Back through the records, literally reversing sensor data and ignoring visual and audio telemetry I was focusing on at the time. Jerome sounded like a doof backwards, but he was my doof. The secondary controller had…there. I pulled back my interface memory, abusing the shipsenses to get the data I'd never have recalled otherwise, taking a moment to read the database entry. Apparently they served as a roving backup or supplement to the main controller, capable of restoring the original programming or storing a completely different set for quick exchanges. It wasn't hard to put the pieces together, and mentally smack myself in the forehead for making a tyro's mistake. That bad checksum for a backup process that I'd ignored at the time had been the floating brain hooking in to make sure the main controller programming matched what it had been loaded with…and at that point the secondary had the corrupted program and the primary had my corrected version. Military paranoia being what it was, that had set off an alarm and the secondary controller had nearly instantly taken the primary offline and taken over operations. The corrupted program interpreted any sort of alarm as a physical attack and put all the drones on active perimeter denial. The normal program would just have had a light flashing in the guard shacks and dispatched a tech specialist ASAP. Fucking sabotage! It was neat, elegant, and entirely bloody stupid. If I'd done the reprogramming at some other point, before the random patrol took the secondary to check up, we might have gotten out in one piece without drama. If the check and alert had happened earlier, everybody might have been shot to ribbons. How did you explain something like that? Bad luck? Random chance? At least now I knew and could prioritize those targets._

_Speaking of targets and my needs._

_I dumped the specs for my armor plating, and the exact dimensions required to the maintenance computer in the hangar. Slugged it as crash priority….god, having that directive tag from PTMC was nice!...and watched it metaphorically bodyslam its way to the top of the queue and set off all sorts of pager alerts. I wanted a sensor package like the Ball had, something that was specialist for this application to augment our generalist suite, but I didn't have the time or luxury to go through circuitry diagrams and figure out how to make everything play nice together. Then again…Quentin had said he used to work on the ((? heavies)), it was more or less the same standard. No sense working on problems solo when time was of the essence and help was available. I pulled up that maintenance order and threw in another line item of simply "standard PTMC security shuttle sensor suite, emphasis on subsurface detection and tracking, suitable for field refit into PIG-GX." Piggx was better than Piggl if one was being formal, but they both still sucked. Let Quentin worry about what matched. Even if we could score a 5x courier off Shiva and run it at a steady internal 3G to Mercury, it'd still be a good nineteen hours. Although you really didn't want to do fine electronics work when your hands and soldering iron weighed triple what you were used to, and I was trying not to think about it being a mere five light-minutes to Mercury and just how much could go wrong in the meantime. I had to count on my people being too clever for their own good and utterly paranoid about detection. A united Earth with an external enemy-well, humans made a hobby of war. With the entire solar system already being mined for resources and plenty of out-system colonies, well, that'd be pretty one-sided. I HAD to have faith in my kind's desire to let the system cripple itself from the inside and destroy that unity. It was what I was supposed to work toward, after all, and I'd been a damn fool for these long years not thinking there were others like me. Our current mission notwithstanding, multiple layers of redundancy was the only way to go to get an important mission accomplished. Said a lot for PTMC, really, to consider that their redundancies were relying on independent contractors._

_Jerome slung himself out of the cockpit as Quentin and his crew got to work on my nose. Tickled like anything, feeling the plasma torches beginning to cut off the damaged armor segments, but it wasn't really what I called important, so I paid more attention to my own feeds into the station's systems. My alert to Tawny had already been answered and she was on standby from her quarters. Oh, life was good with the master PTMC overrides…too bad there really wasn't more time to screw around._

_("Hon, you got your dame on hold, wall comm, line seven. Hangar request still pending.")_

_He ambled awkardly over toward the communication station built into the edge of the hangar bay where it dead-ended into the corridor and punched up the channel I'd requested. I kept half an ear out, listening via his implant for the comfort of his voice and via the station's computers for Tawny's answers. What fragmentary data I was getting back about hangar complements wasn't great. If we wanted singleton mining ships, we were in luck, like the kind Thomas had found Raspberry with. If we wanted security shuttles, an endless supply of Hamster Balls, we were in luck….if you wanted to call it that. As far as executive toys, the manifest listed one high-zoot number capable of an x4 multiplier docked in the upper pylon's small-craft hangar. The pylon that had gotten zorched by the initial power beam attack. You win some you lose some._

"Tawny, just wanted to let you know…"

_He began, without preamble. I 'borrowed' a station emitter, tagged our ID with a copy of the military prefix Roth had given, and shot a request ostensibly from Jerome down to Tycho for the immediate release of Hannah and the Ball back up here._

"….that all of the Lunar colonies and mines and outposts are confirmed safe. We're trying to find something to get us to Mercury pretty damn quick…"

_Requested a tightbeam ack, slapped the emitter to receive, and left the movement controls locked out under a false maintenance order. Grabbed another emitter, turned it up to levels enough to punch through the ambient communication fuckery that'd been going on ever since this morning, and got on the horn to Shiva. SOMEBODY there had to have something that would do the job, goddammit. Hurry up and wait, like always._

"….and we're gonna requisition Hannah as extraction support. A couple maintenance items, nothing big. But you can go ahead, rebuild your station, and help where needed on the surface. Thought you'd like to know."

_Only a light-second or so to Shiva, what's a little lag between friends? Well. I wasn't being friendly. More like 'does this rag smell like chloroform to you?' forceful to their systems. Mentally I crossed my fingers for a x5 executive yacht or a x6 courier, although these days most traffic too sensitive for lightspeed transmission went via message torpedo. Slowing it down at the other end, now, that was an engineering problem I had studied in passing. Part of me wanted…_

"Oh my god! Jerome, I'm so glad you're OK! That everybody down there is OK…"

…_to give him the luxury I couldn't. And to do so by snatching something exquisitely expensive from under the noses of the executives was that extra little kick in the dick I loved to deliver. For my inlaws, if nothing else, today._

"…I think we had a personal transport for a regional manager. Facilities inspection, but, uh…"

_Yeah, uh is right. Zorched. Nothing in the hangars at Shiva, which didn't surprise me one bit. No answer from Tycho, which slightly did. All the corp rats, fleeing for their holes at max speed. All the couriers, outbound faster than I could feasibly recall them. Then I saw a promising entry pop up as a new filed plan._

"Yeah. My secretary's working on something suitable. Don't worry about it unless you've got a line on something."

_Big Carrot_, _coming up from Ecuador, registering a stopover at Shiva for fueling, then on to Zeta Aquilae, with a handover to local traffic control for final in-system routing. Some bigwig, fleeing the solar system entirely. Dig dig dig…something from the Prime Mover class. New construction. Hideously expensive. Engines to customer specification, this hull purchased by PTMC. Promising. I told Shiva to pull the records on it and slug it my way….I had a feeling this was the one to flag down._

_("Hold that thought.")_

"Nothing comes to mind, Jerome. Listen, about Hamster…"

_Better be a yes, not that a no would be much of a problem. It wasn't Tawny that was going to be the problem any way you figured it though._

"….whatever you need, whoever you need, no questions asked. Besides, not like me saying no would stop you."

_Good girl. Have a biscuit. Here came the reply from Tycho. Terse, official, she was on her way back. We'd…HE'D…deal with her when she got here. Shiva was taking its sweet fucking time with those records, I could practically picture some ancient mainframe on an Earth-side downlink pulling up buried expense data to feed through, choking on its own dust._

"Well, it's always nice to _ask…._"

_I could practically hear the dimples in his voice. I could also hear that his mind was about a hundred fifty feet away-to make an educated guess, on me. A clanging clatter broke the conversation as the first heavy ceramalloy armor panel hit the floor and spun aside, narrowly missing crushing one of Quentin's crewmembers' feet. I shivered, manifesting as nothing more than a quick flicking of the control surfaces, at the sensation. Ignored the pleasantries Jerome and Tawny were mouthing at each other by way of fucking off and hanging up politely. This was interesting. __Carrot__ specced out at being ordered for a H. Parker with a set of x6 courier engines and...uh-oh. Jerome was pacing slowly back and forth down the corridor, to the lift doors and back. Restoring circulation, exercising muscles abused by his own weight and my speed._

_("If you're quite done. Big questions. Which matters more, accomplishing the overall objective-clean up the danger-or doing it by Dravis' dictates?")_

_He had the good grace to not even pause before firing off the only sensible reply._

("Fuck the niceties. Do what we have to.")

_("Good, because it means we're going to ignore Venus and most of Mercury entirely. I'll explain on the way out. Oh, and I may be carjacking the private ride of the CFO of PTMC.")_

_That at least made him pause. Well, more like miss a step and stumble before recovering himself._

("Are we going to spend all day punching this far above our weight class?")

_("Go big or go home.")_

_I shot back dryly, privately a little proud. It wouldn't get more luxurious than that._

("For making enemies, too….")

_("Omelettes. Eggs.")_

_Now, what could that thing do….hah, they were heating up the airwaves to their local tower demanding clearance and threatening this and that. I bounced an override through Shiva back down to Ecuador. Immediate priority launch, approved for max delta-V through to Shiva. Left a little stopping block in Shiva…immediate priority disembarcation, max dV on autopilot to us. That'd rattle some cages._

_("How many eggs you want to break? Fill in Sammy D on our progress and altered flight plan, so we've got somebody in the loop? Or keep our secrets?")_

_Those were the decisions I weren't going to make. Didn't want to be anywhere near._

("He's an asshole. But…that directive is still in force, and we are still on-mission. Why don't you tell me and I'll decide what to tell him? Or can you?")

_On balance, it'd probably be better that way. This little stunt was going to make plenty more enemies and we at least needed a reason….since the boy had gotten us the gig on the strength of our _own_ ability to do the interplanetary run. But…dammit, my emotions were still in turmoil. I wanted to at least give him the chance to deal with one crisis at a time. Sit back in a properly cushioned chair, the sensation of me against him while I explained the other parts. But personal wasn't the same thing as important._

_("I would prefer to wait until we're on the __Carrot__ and passing Shiva on our insystem run. More for your sake, really.")_

_I could hear him sigh, stepping up the pace to a ground-covering floaty jog further up and down the corridor._

("Fuckit, a cardiac arrest would be a nice way to get out of this, wouldn't it? Is this better or worse than you being more of a nonhuman than I always figured?")

_Now how did you answer a question like that? Telemetry said Hannah had just come over the horizon, headed this way in a respectable pace. I very carefully ignored listening to anything over that channel._

_("The impact to you is minimal. Relatively. The implications for everybody else are just kind of worse than we'd been thinking. Maybe. Change to the mission means a lot less active work….if we find what I'm anticipating in Mercury.")_

_Enough weasel words to open a weasel plantation. Keeping my big secret from him was one thing, and had always grated, but this was tying into an entire massive can of worms and it was going operational. Whatever else I'd done, hadn't done, I'd never kept the details of an op obscured. With our lives on the line every time we went out there, there wasn't time for secrets. Especially not this time._

_("All right, dammit, I've got a theory that my folks are behind this.")_

_It felt good to say it finally, nevermind his long pause. I could see him peering around the corner of a frame stanchion at my hull, a puzzled eyebrow lifted, as he waited patiently for me to explain._

_("Look, the encryption language was familiar. The language I was taught before I was taught English and all the others. Haven't spoken Rihannsu since before I was dead and before I had all those fake memories implanted, but I guess some part of my mind remembered it. What with being a dead saboteur and all…that means I wasn't the only one, which is consonant with how I think and the overall mission. Remember the in-system transmission we keep hearing about from the Mercury relay station? The one that's fucked up a couple of these facilities that we know have received it? My best guess is that there's _something_ lurking there, another spy or an automated system.")_

_Deep breath. I was still shaky as hell about how he felt about any of this, although the shipsenses still didn't pick up much in the way of rampant overreaction from his direction._

("All right…so we're working at cross-purposes against another one of your countrymen. Perhaps more. Unknown hostiles, with unknown capabilities. It's probably safe to say they know we're on the warpath. But…if all the facilities are cut off from further broadcasts, why aren't we clearing warrens as we go in?")

_Thank Vishnu for reasonable men. Plenty of time later for emotional comfort. I hoped the __Carrot__ had a fully stocked bar._

_("What've we seen? The outpost was studying the trapped humans. We don't know if it was a testing-to-destruction thing or not, but no drone hostility unless we provoked them. Tycho guardpost was poised for violence, per the standard military priorities. I don't think a broadcast would have radically reprogrammed anything in that kind of detail, not with the typical downlinks and mobile backups. You'd need to have comprehensive knowledge of PTMC specs and detailed programming.")_

_Not that it was impossible. A few years to prepare, or being highly enough placed to get access to It from the horse's ass. That didn't bear thinking about. Not yet._

_("It's a theory at this stage. Haven't seen an active mine, probably should, if you mention the plural of anecdote isn't data I will hire somebody to hit you.")_

_Jerome nodded, shrugged, and went back to a fast pace._

("So you want to go to Mercury, track down this transmission's origin, see a mine, and….? If you're right, pretend I'm not understanding the next step and explain it. Please.")

_It all seemed so simple in my head, until I said it. Then it became a spun-sugar-thin tissue of 'if's. Hannah was on her final approach and we wouldn't get any peace to hash this out possibly until I'd filled the __Carrot_ _with knockout gas. Speaking of which….it was outbound to Shiva now, the relatively short orbital leg. Good, it'd give us time to get straightened out various messes._

_("The way I see it, if we only have to worry about decrypting the programming and if only the military facilities are _actively_ hostile, we can just run those like we've been doing. Some overwatch help, local support, artillery handy. Or get them to clean their own warrens, although that's probably breach-of-contract. For the rest….infil, reprogram, whack any mobile controllers. Go hunting, thorough mop-up, rescue at our leisure.")_

_He finally stopped his exercise routine, pacing a long route around the edge of the hangar, trying to stay out of the way. Quentin dogged down the last of the fasteners on the first of the new armor panels and I had to fight off the urge to shake myself down like a dog. He wouldn't understand. Instead I just sat there like a good girl while they began to remove the other one._

("….Yeah, I see the problem. We don't have to blow 'em, but doing so means I have to explain the encryption to PTMC, and blow the saboteur thing wide open. Fuck.")

_Now he was starting to see the strategy side of the board._

("I'm not entirely sure humanity is ready for alien contact, but….fuck. Who's to contact?")

_I chose to take that as literally as possible._

_("Forgive me, but, the Pacific-Ocean-scattered ashes of one dead alien girl, our current saboteur, possibly others. Who will likely be going into deep, deep cover when this hits the fan one way or another. We've got spaceflight and a primitive sort of space-warp drive…like the UEG is playing around with already, or, uh, so I hear. We're not some hideous tentacled giant-brained…well, OK, kind of telepathic empaths…super-race of bug-eyed monsters. Only surgery I had for the mission was to lighten my skin tone to something plausibly part-animal from a Saturn colony. Hell, you've banged me, you know how my body feels.")_

("Yeah, you monster, you made my eyes bug out a number of times. But….all right, rough parity I can understand. We're gonna bump heads with you eventually anyway, then, if you're already close enough to be concerned with humanity. Fuckit, that's not my problem. Why not just present this data as a straightforward decrypt? I don't know your language, I don't know how a computer gets these outputs, I just know it does. They can question me all they want.")

_Fucking idiot. They'd haul him in, use the good drugs, until he spilled everything he knew. Then my ass was in a sling. I was under no illusions that it would end any differently. We _had_ to disappear after this mission was over and we got paid, assuming we made it that long, assuming PTMC's coin was good for what we were planning._

_("We'll deal with that later. Straight decrypt works for me. Based on what we find on Mercury I may suggest trying to completely clean a facility and leaving it up to Dravis and the directors as to whether a full sterilization is needed. But I'm still poring over all this data. It looks like all that happened was the language was changed internally and all the safeties removed…but there's some troubling instructions in here buried in a failsafe code block. It looks like….hold that thought.")_

_There the Hamster was, slinging herself down from the cockpit and making a beeline for Jerome. At least the security squad from before hadn't reissued her her sidearm. I saw Quentin flinch but continue working. Give the boys this, they were quick. Say what you liked about Post-Terran, they knew their metal-working. Although I still thought of them as a bunch of diseased ores._

"Congratulations, you fucking asshole, I've got blood and vomit all the fuck over my shuttle, what could you _possibly_ want after your little containment failure back there? Primaries in low orbit, like the goddamn Nazis were colonizing or something…"

_This was off to a great start. Jerome turned around, arching an eyebrow and utterly refusing to give her the advantage of legitimacy this time._

"Shit happens, Hannah. Thanks to this fucking asshole, there were people left to bleed and puke on your evac run. As for what I want…you're on tap for the insystem run. I commandeered the CFO's personal ship, dumped his ass at the dock up there on the cargo pylon, and we're heading straight for Mercury as soon as it docks here on autopilot."

_Guess he wasn't the only one tired of her ego. Hamster paused a moment, looking supremely nonplussed. An abortive raising of a balled fist, then let her arm drop back to her side. You could almost see the wheels turning behind those squinted black eyes._

"….Fuck you! You pompous little prick! Swear to god I'd take a swing at you for that. Except you'd probably catch it."

_Probably have to concentrate real hard _not_ to grab inbound fist with claws and twist while retaliating. An evac pilot with a broken wrist and sprained ribs wouldn't be a lot of good._

"Catch it, knock you flat, sit on you until a security detail got here, and requisition another pilot. We don't have time for these petty little ego pissing matches. You'd better figure out right now whether or not you want that stick."

_Of course, any other pilot could probably do the job, but it seemed to be what she needed to hear. With a gobbet of spittle onto the deck—away from him and, it pleased me to note, also away from my hull—she turned away and pretended to fiddle with something inside her helmet. Her coffee-brown face was dark-chocolate with suppressed tension but she nodded and muttered something about not resisting the chance to go piss all over an executive's bathroom._

"In which case..."

_Jerome said, with a weary sort of grin.._

"Welcome back aboard."


	20. The Big Why

Chapter 20: The Big Why

"When you send a man out with a gun, you create a policymaker. When his ass is on the line, he will do whatever he needs to do. And if the implications of that bother you, the time to do something about it is before you decide to send him out."

-David Drake

I wanted...I didn't know what I wanted. I wanted, most of all, to have had the day so far be just another wrenching nightmare. To live, comfortable in small odd jobs of contract violence with my love and my habits. Get out and visit my folks for that big barbeque. Instead, here we were. Jenny was an alien, Earth had a death toll in the billions, and there was one man, one woman, and two expensive spaceships between some sort of economic alien invasion. THIS was what happened when you started seeing the big picture, when you let go of your comfortable small-scale thinking. I'd be the first to admit that I wasn't that terribly intelligent—just determined. Which meant as long as I could keep my head down and trust in Jenny to handle grand strategy, as always, we could either make it through this in our usual fashion or go out in a blaze of spectacularly miscalculated glory having done our best. One headache at a time, and Hamster was at least being dealt with.

"Welcome back aboard."

And proceeded to ignore her presence.

("You're seriously dumping the CFO off at a cargo lock back at Shiva?")

_("You think I'm stupid enough to bring him and his family _here_ just so we can have a lovely little shouting match? I'll keep station comms from that wing tied up until after we're outbound. There's no fucking way anything short of the UEG can catch us then, and if we brief Sammy promptly...ahem. The fallout may be minimal.")_

I had to laugh at that, which earned me a funny glance from Hamster as she paced back and forth between Jenny and her shuttle.

("You and your angles. You really think we're going to survive to worry about the corporate fallout?")

_("I just wish this had gone through Io. You don't want to know how much of our budget I've gotten from taking the unofficial long-odds bets on us surviving AND completing mission objectives. Odds on this one plus the PTMC payout would buy us our own COLONY.")_

There were times I wondered if she really needed a front man at all. Quentin waved to me, the noise of power tools dying off as the mournful hoot of the incoming-craft klaxon took up the decibel mantle, and I trotted over his way as he jogged to meet me half-way.

"Looking good, man. Got her topped off with ordinance..."

_("Loaded and locked.")_

"...and the armor's fixed. Tawny said you had a transport coming in hot, you need consumeables for that as well?"

Buddha bless efficiency. And it was a little chance to repay some owed drinks...

"Need to make a high-speed run insystem. Why don't you and your crew go in there and secure anything liquid that might suffer from sustained gees? I don't have much of a palate. But, uh, do check the name on the manifest against PTMC's board. Wouldn't do for anybody to get too careless afterward."

Quentin goggled at me. I could hear Jenny sniggering quietly in my ear.

"...yeah, sure, we can...we can do that! I'll make sure you're topped off and turned around ASAP."

He was gone, running toward the vast sleek bulk that was settling to a graceful halt in the dead center of the hangar. Pointy-nosed and long, the forward bit was just humanity's design consideration to a long accomodation to atmospheric requirements. Less efficient than a simple cargo box but darn if it didn't look fast anyway. The middle living quarters didn't have any exterior windows, which you'd expect of something designed to move quick, and the rear transport section was cavernous enough to swallow at least three standard PTMC shuttles. Long outriggers held the nacelle-enclosed engines—themselves a good third the length of the ship!- out and down from the fuselage, giving it a stable platform to land on and making sure the hard to maintain bits were at ground level for easy access. Frost immediately had begun to form on them as the contrast between station air temperature and the chill of space pulled residual moisture out of the air. This was the second time today I'd seen engines big enough that they had to be hung externally, recalling the morning's garish dreadnaught...and for the second time, I felt completely dwarfed by the scale of these bigger ships. Sure, the Potemkin had been bigger still, but you didn't relate to that kind of size as a ship, more like an ambulatory station.

As the Carrot 's docking platform doors hinged upwards on either side, exposing the refractory floor and a frameless space big enough to outright _fly_ something into, I couldn't help but glance speculatively at the sleek atmosphere-only speedster tied down to the decking. It wouldn't be there for long, Quentin's crew was at least going to take care of business first because I saw the little electric tug making its way toward the courier's landing platform.

("You make that a DeKhotinsky Special?")

(_"Nice, isn't it? Looks fast and expensive. Too bad about the fuel requirements giving it no legs AND no space capacity.")_

("Yeah, when he could've just had a over-the-top, eats-all-operational-profits-to-maintain, vexingly-capable-multi-role, limited-quantities, illegal-for-private-ownership prototype instead?")

Jenny's raspberry came through the implant with perfect clarity.

_("At least he can carry his family in it, you extravagant asshole.")_

("But there's the jumpseat behind mine!")

I protested with a grin, distracted as was probably her intent.

_("That's not a passenger seat, that's watermelon storage. For a small watermelon. That you don't like.")_

("Like the kids I don't want?")

_("Tough. I might want some someday now that I don't have to squeeze watermelons through any part of my anatomy. I'll just put you out to stud for midget women.")_

It was a strange image to contemplate as the sportster quivered under the pull of the winch on the tug and the crew swore at each other as an unreleased tiedown went taut with a twang loud enough to wake echoes from the far wall. Banter aside, the only person I'd ever thought about starting a family with was her, and that was...well, there were logistical difficulties with the idea. I didn't see myself as much of a father type either.

("You already have kids. Those two black ones you've been incubating safely in your missile pods for how many months now? Speaking of squeezing something out.")

_("And, just like yours, they'd make the world recoil in horror if they ever got squirted out into the light of day.")_

The sportster came free and began to roll down the ramp—extending from the ship's floor over the nacelles to the deck of the hangar—with increasing speed toward the tug. A crewmember sitting facing backwards on the tug saw the gap closing and tapped the tug's driver on the shoulder frantically. The driver misinterpreted the gesture...I heard Jenny suck in her breath in an anticipatory wince...and slammed on the brakes to turn around and see what the first crewmember wanted. With an expensive-sounding noise the speedster dumped its forward velocity by the simple expedient of crumpling its nose into the back of the tug.

("Alibi!")

_("I swear I didn't touch a fucking thing!")_

Our voices overlapped, then so did our laughter, handily drowning out the noise of a workplace squabble starting up. Quentin rushed over, arms waving, shouting something I hardly bothered to try and lip-read after the first few expected profanities. Between the tug driver, Quentin, and the crewmember angrily pointing out particular points of damage, there was enough shouting that I could actually mumble instead of subvocalizing.

("About that. Aside from the virtues of manually flying in versus the smashy tow service, you figure we'll load the Ball first?")

(_"Might as well. If we're last in we'll be first out. Now, back to more pressing matters. I've been thinking about this. What exactly are we going to tell Dravis? I figure…limited truth. Maps to some kind of unknown encryption, but algorithmic comparision against original source code makes it seem like a relatively straightforward translation. We may be able to translate back unless there's a secondary controller holding onto another corrupted copy.")_

I scratched the stubble on my chin—dammit, I'd just shaved this morning, what seemed like six lifetimes ago—and nodded in agreement. That wasn't a question, it was a handily giftwrapped solution.

("Explain to me, if you would. Why capturing the humans? Why experimenting on them? Why taking them prisoner? And why the…")

A ghastly scraping sound, metal-on-metal, interrupted my question. The tug driver was driving with one hand over one ear, just pulling the thing along the floor. Not for the first time was I glad for the lesser spin-gravity of the station…more weight would have meant more scrapes and more damage. As it was, the overtones were bad enough to make me cringe and feel fur I didn't really have start to fluff up.

("….that is one EXPENSIVE fuckup…why the, well…")

Not to put too a fine point on it.

("Why did they roast millions of people?")

Please let it be malice, please let it be deliberate, because that way my anger and revenge and grief could have an acceptable target. There was a somewhat sympathetic silence before she answered, louder to be heard above the noise of the speedster being ignominiously dragged back to the cargo elevator. With a whine of motors the lift ascended slowly toward the level where all the other ships were stored.

_("Understand I can't be completely sure of these things. I'm theorizing on pretty thin ice, love, but everything we've seen so far can be seen as simple fail-deadly.")_

I understood fail-deadly, it was something you tried to avoid designing missions around…at least for your forces. But I didn't understand how PTMC—for chrissake, they cut corners, anybody that big did, and they were a bunch of scheming amoral parasites responsible for ruining my father…twice now!...and hundreds of thousands of others, but….

"Are you seriously trying to tell me that some fucking bit flipped and now the drones are trying to exterminate all humans?!"

Although that would be kind of fun. Warren-clearing the proper way, despite short life expectancy. Get the military fighters and shuttles in there…

(_"No! No, no, no. Nothing so sinister…yet. Just…parameter tweaks. The outpost thought there were no humans in control, so the programming switched over to 'intruder defense' mode and captured everybody in the facility. That mode was already in the system. The science lab was running experiments on facility staff where they happened to be, from the looks of it, and had the other specimens in secured storage. That programming was already in the system—although usually not for every drone to participate in. When we shot that one down the main reactor access shaft and it tried to get a distress call off, the facility went into lockdown and started to treat us like intruders. That response was already in the system.")_

("And the reactor shooting its own plasma at us? Are you going to seriously suggest that standard PTMC operating procedure for intruders is to melt them into puddles of broken DNA and irradiate the bejesus out of the control room?")

I was getting madder and madder at the patent….sensibility of what she was telling me. Like any other story-thinking human, I wanted a clear-cut villain to justify the enormity of the meatgrinder we'd stuck our collective cocks into.

(_"Fuck me sideways if I know. That one's new, maybe it's a military bit of programming. I've only seen the one code dump, remember? I can't work miracles!")_

"In stark contrast to prior evidence…" I muttered aloud, still not mollified.

(_"That's more like industrial quantities of illegality and bullshit and you not really caring to know what I'm doing until it's done. Hold one, Hannah on the comm. You want her?")_

("Not if we had the choice. Shit. One of these days we're going to get time for a real conversation. And a real beer.")

I sighed and squinched my eyes shut for a moment, wrinkling forehead and nose in the process. My entire body was starting to ache from sustained gravities and unresolved stress. Since waking up it seemed like everything had escalated into a succession of worse and worse nightmares. My belly rumbled, reminding me that I'd had nothing to eat for many, many hours.

"And a fucking sandwich. Put her on."

(_"'…me in, MD1032. Ball requesting docking priority status.")_

Must've pinned her ears back harder than I thought.

"Let's just assume informal comm protocol unless I let you know otherwise…"

Because I was too fucking tired for the ritual language of empty symbolism.

"…and go ahead and take station in the back of the Carrot. I'm taking front for rapid exfil as needed. Your call on tug versus manual control."

Whatever she thought would result in less damage.

(_"'Acknowledged. On my way in. See you in the living room."' And that's one I'll bet you're not looking forward to.")_

"Shit, Dravis will be easy, we don't have to put up with him in our hip pocket. Ugh! Where was I."

_("Sandwiches? And safeties. Yeah. I don't know about the reactor thing. That's why I want to find a mine….if this pattern bears out, the drones will be probably viewing humans as acceptable veins of ore. With unpleasant results. As for Rio…the power stations are zorched, so there's no way to really figure it out now and there's way too much on our plate for me to afford to spend too much time scanning news feeds for data. If I had to guess, something involving focus target parameters being tweaked on the individual relays. So instead of a series of defocused beams from the satellite relays to ground antennas, a series of focused beams from the ground relays to a big non-antenna target. Hell, the entire satellite array is controlled as one big unit anyway.")_

Hannah's shuttle quivered, sounded a klaxon, and lit its thrusters inside the huge docking bay. I could see her diminutive form giving two raised middle fingers to the tug driver, now frantically reversing away from the splashes of blue flame raking the floor, as the shuttle finally wavered into the air by a mere foot or so. Gradually, gradually, she eased it over to the landing bay of our transport, and let it sit down again. She'd parked it neatly sideways, poised for a faster evacuation. I couldn't keep my thoughts straight. Beams, arrays, robots, Dravis, Hannah, don't forget your lover's a dead alien...

("And our saboteur is behind all this, then?")

(_"Insufficient data, but who the fuck else would speak the language? Remember we've heard a few things here and there about a routine systems-update widebeam transmission going out, after which point everything started to get screwed up?")_

So much had happened. I furrowed my brow, trying to think back. Something about a message after which things had gone haywire, but I couldn't recall it in precise enough detail to be of any use. Jenny made an exasperated noise at me as Hannah climbed down from her cockpit, waved at us, and disappeared into the transport.

("No, but your memory's got a cheating advantage. Out from Mercury, I take it, since we're breaking all the rules to get there? Does anything have a log of that transmission?")

With it being our turn to load up, I trotted for the cockpit, tossing a half-salute to Quentin as he and his crews emerged from the transport's cargo hatch with a small cart full of boxes that made somewhat suspicious glass clanking noises. That's when it hit me.

"Shit!"

_("What now?")_

"Shiva! Doesn't that widebeam hit every running facility? Don't fucking tell me we have to zorch Shiva after all."

_("….Active facilities only. Shiva's administrative, they should be on a different branch or update cycle. ….Shit!")_

"What now?"

("_Here! This is still an active processing station normally! Hang on.")_

Cold sweat prickled at my temples as I slung myself into the seat and pulled on the helmet. It stank of stress hormones and the forehead padding felt clammy at first, the sure sign of a hard job not yet finished. There was a worrying delay before the restraints inflated, the cockpit whined shut, and the internal display came to life, Jenny settling on a non-power-demanding cartoonish interpretation of her in a 1940s secretarial outfit and sitting at a desk looking busy.

"Let me know…"

She held up a hand and waved it distractedly, annoyedly, at me, listening to something on the phone to her ear.

_"Systems-level access…where the hell….oh, here it is! Yes, they got the update. No, it hasn't been applied. Thank God for small favors!"_

I was confused as hell.

"You can NOT apply them? I thought they ran automatically…"

Jenny shook her head at me, dialing a number on some sort of round dial on the cartoon phone one digit at a time. It seemed like an awfully arcane way to do it but I was no technological historian.

_"Active facilities, yes. Stations, the station managers are supposed to rubber-stamp the update ASAP. I see the alert sitting in Tawny's inbox but it's been routed to a folder labeled "HEAD OFFICE JIGGERY POKERY FUCKERY" which was last accessed 20 minutes before the initial incident. From the volume of messages in there it looks like she's been too busy keeping things running—and then with us—to get around to it.")_

"And procrastination scores another great victory…tomorrow. Get it the fuck out of there! Can you safely transmit a copy with all sorts of dire warnings back to Shiva?"

She scoffed at me and hung up the phone.

_"Some of us don't have thumbs, so we can't sit around with them up our asses. I've pulled it out of the system, replaced the message with a warning from you that this contained potentially the thing that caused all the damage, and I'm dumping it straight to a printer on Shiva. It won't exactly infect anything from studiable hardcopy. You already sent a message to the head of R&D on station that this needed to be carefully examined,and NOT run as-is because it was likely viral and pursuant to the directive you're working on, blah blah blah. You're so diligent, dear, I love that about you."_

"Have you ever considered just putting a blow-up doll in the seat? Because you sure don't need me except as cockpit candy."

She rolled her eyes theatrically at me.

_"Yes, dear, you make such good cock candy, I'll even let you forget that for, oh, the next week. Explains why that freighter hadn't even heard anything from stations, though. Want me to get on board yet?"_

"You're doing everything else, might as well. I'll just ponder. Can we resend a message that says 'undo that last' or 'overwrite everything with this original code'? Exploit the auto-running patch systems?"

She hung up the phone and popped back into 3D, staring me down as I felt the ship vibrate with the fans coming up to speed.

_"Let me get this straight. You want to take a catastrophic threat to a solar-systemic united—more or less—civilization and press an 'undo' button to fix it?"_

I'd heard less incredulity from the cops after the little stolen aircar incident that put me in the Io Institute in the first place. Her eyebrow looked like it was on a collision course with her hairline. Sheepishly I tried to hang my head, but only succeeded in reminding myself that the restraints still worked.

"OK, OK, it was a lousy idea. Can we take the castigation for granted and move on?"

She put her hands on her hips, shaking her head for a moment and looking amused.

_"No, it's actually a good idea, you're starting to pick up on systems thinking. It's just that it's the first thing somebody would think of. While there would be some saboteur entertainment value in having PTMC send out a recall message, only to have a corrupted controller dump back the original faulty code and put every facility in intruder-alert mode…."_

She paused for a moment, frowning. I could guess the consequences were running through her head in a much clearer fashion than the wooly permutations in mine.

"Wouldn't be much point in Hannah's intervention then, would there?"

_"And not much of a reason not to just send the military in. I wonder if the 'incident' was a result of an automatic and correct focus of beams on an available area needing fantastic power density, just with corrupt code causing the deliberate misalignment…but I digress."_

I nodded, reluctantly admitting to myself that it was at least a plausible theory until we could do some trials-by-fire.

"So we can probably assume that…."

Perhaps perversely, she wasn't going to fly us in, so I wrapped my gloved fingers around the sticks and wiggled them slightly to indicate that I was going to take control. A slight tug up on the directional and just the faintest roll-in of throttle…wobbily, we rose as I reasoned it out, setting up a slight lateral drift toward the yawningly huge hold of the Carrot.

"…either the communication sytems are entirely disabled…"

But that left a big complicated plot to run on its own. There was a reason that you tended to call training simulators 'Murphys', because it was best to train yourself into assuming that anything could happen at any point. Because it usually did, right about when you thought it was going right. Case in point, this morning. A little more throttle, a touch more height, and just a sprinkle of yaw to start us rotating, the movement across the hangar floor at an easy walking pace. I twitched muscles in sequence against the throttle until the oscillation was damped out, just to keep my hand in. Jenny waited patiently as I thought it through. No, if it were me, I wouldn't lock them out, in case something like us came around—an unanticipated solution.

"….or they're running in standby until a specific signal arrives, coded to change parameters."

Jenny smirked at me insouciantly as we drifted over the lip of the ramp. It was an even tossup as to whether she or I cut the throttle first to ensure reflected thrust didn't bounce the fins off the ceiling of the hold. One broken ship was quite enough for the day. I glared at her as another bubble of thought percolated through that cup of them.

"….so given full systems access, why _couldn't_ there be a 'nevermind' signal?!"

_"Oh, I never said there couldn't be one. But it wouldn't be anything in normal PTMC coding. Or it might be. Understand that the 'turn back on and listen up' transmission could be anything. Anything at all in the EM spectrum that any given facility could receive, from a copy of your home movies of our horizontal tango to somebody dancing a hornpipe near a seismic sensor. That'll be coming from the saboteur or a previously commandeered signal source, or relayed through a thousand concealed proxy systems. And the speed of light is a little hard to beat. So yes, there's probably an undo option, but if whoever's behind this is good enough that I didn't even know it was anything more than a systemic fuckup until I got into the data dump on site, there's no WAY I'm going to undo that coding before the heat death of the universe short of the universal high-temperature decryption method applied to the source. AKA a red hot poker and its liberal use."_

"Do you ever use short words when a long one will fit?"


	21. Mixed Signals

Chapter 21: Mixed Signals

"We keep getting hotter, movin' way too fast  
If we don't slow this fire down we're not gonna last."

-Boston

_I felt Jerome twitch the control stick the other way to cancel my yaw. A feather-light pressure on my shoulder that I was already beginning to start myself. Facing back the way we'd come, I obeyed his obvious instructions to let me settle down off tip-toes and come to rest on the deck. Sure, he could've come straight through and left me pointing the original direction, but if you didn't practice the detail work when you could, damn sure somebody was going to take advantage of it and you wouldn't like the result. As I deflated the bolsters and popped the canopy, he slung his helmet back in the watermelon seat for a change and laboriously clambered out. At least this excursion had been good for giving him back some of his low-G reflexes. He was on the right track, more or less, but I wasn't sure that he understood—after all this time!—why we were heading to Mercury. Well, it wasn't like we hadn't been busy._

("_The _point_ is that if we just run outsystem as per the original plan, what happens if word gets back? We could find the situation changing and adapting to us to eliminate our meddling. As we get further outsystem and the facilities are both newer and more actively used, there's already going to be a whole new threat level from things we haven't seen yet. I want to investigate that signal source, check if I can find corrupting influences on the master PTMC relay or whatever the hell is there. Even if not, I can put my own sort of data tap—if there's another targeted tightbeam transmission I can know about it while we're en route somewhere else. It doesn't mean our saboteur is going to be USING a central transmission again but think about it this way. The big advantage we have, other than luck, charisma…")_

("And generous equipment?")

_("Yours or mine? Anyway, what are the realistic odds of a double agent just happening to be in the right place at the right time with the right equipment to figure this out and undo it?")_

_He nodded thoughtfully, smirking a bit._

("Improbable. Movie option? If we survive? But once we're outbound...if we communicate back that we're on our way to solving it that puts us at intense risk if it gets out.")

_He was starting to get it._

_("In addition to the naturally escalating threat level. We're close to the home planet here, remember, a lot of this stuff is ancient and not really used that much. We start running outsystem and there may only BE a scattered human population supervising drone operations. It gives the saboteur time to realize our effectiveness, start sending signals, and have those drastically outrun us. Either way we're in a pretty big hole and _I_ think, for what it's worth, the only way we can start making it shallower is at least by tracing an obvious signal trunk where news could leak or new updates could come, and cracking on the speed.")_

("First rule when you're in a hole…")

_He got it. Except just how those parameters could change was weighing a little heavy on my mind. It could be anything! Detect further entry, melt down the reactor. On moving metal not matching existing facility signatures, everything gets security programming and sent out to repel the invader. If entry detected here, then output a signal to here…say a weaponry R&D place…to do something heinous to the nearest population. Some PTMC facilities in extremely hazardous or remote areas, the kind I was thinking of once you got much beyond the asteroid belt, had built-in fabrication facilities. Where attrition was expected from conditions, and it was uneconomic to ship drones in, they could manufacture them from local supplies, fully automated after operator selection of design. The implications of _that_ one sent a shiver down my spine so hard I could feel the ship's control surfaces tremble. That seemed like a great point to bring up if we needed to approach one of those places and probably not otherwise. Of course how many times had I thought that already today?_

_("Or at least use a smaller shovel.")_

_I envied Raspberry for a long self-indulgent moment. She could be taught just about anything, no matter how complicated, but she just wasn't designed to do much self-referential thinking. Task excellence, basic sweet and loving personality, but a lack of mental tailchasing that had always kept her on an even keel and more or less content even when things got bad._

_("You'll have a few hours, at any rate, until Mercury. The master suite should have a nice water-cushion bath and hopefully you can find some pre-prepared food. Sure there'll be gees but you can at least eat some lunch. Shower, shit, shave, all that good stuff. Just if you're going to do it all at once, put something over the camera button first!")_

("So you deliberately want to avoid a blackmail opportunity? Guess this is taking its toll on both of us…")

_He shot back over his shoulder, tossing me a cheerful wave before opening the airlock into the main part of the ship. I'd never seen a working lock carpeted in white shag before, and couldn't help but stare until he had the outer door closed and the inner one open. At that point…well, it wasn't the sort of thing you'd expect from somebody with that kind of revenue behind them._

("Did somebody just…forget to order furnishings?")

_This ultra-luxe private little CFO toy, this commandeered speedster, wasn't opulent at all. Matte white plastic, perfectly smooth, lined everything, glowing softly from within and with the only flat surface being the floor. Gleaming metal handrails ran the length of the initial corridor, and its only concession to the needs of human feet was a sort of textured ridging in the plastic underfoot. Jerome looked through the circular hatch-style doors to the left and right, giving me glimpses of a small locker room and an equally small head, both bereft of any sort of personal touches. Shaking his head he advanced to the larger door at the end of the corridor and opened It onto the minimal kitchen. The theme continued…matte glowing plastic, bright scratch-free metal. The kitchen didn't even look big enough for two people, rather a sort of space-going efficiency apartment with hatches at either end that gave way to what were probably storage lockers. I shook my head, plotting what I'd seen against the external design._

_("Aggressive minimalism. We had more space at Io! Of course this is a pretty narrow transport. Maybe the bedrooms will be decently sized? And there should still be the common area and cockpit through that hatch straight in front of you.")_

_Jerome paused mid-step and probably lifted his eyebrows, if I could've seen._

"The hatch straight in front of me is the only way I can GO unless you really think my response to all this is to go stick my head into a meat locker."

_("And who'd blame you? OK, OK, I'm just saying that this whole full-width half-length slices thing is weird.")_

_He opened the next hatch, stepping into another small airlock with storage compartments to the right and left that were gapingly empty apart from dangling cargo nets._

"So's putting an airlock between the cabin and the kitchens. Somebody's got a real hardon for operational isolation. Let me guess, entire power plant is..."

_Well, he couldn't see power conduits like I could, so it wasn't entirely fair._

_("At the back, behind the cargo hold. Redundant feeds down under the decking and up through the spine to the outboard nacelles via their forward pylons. Not just the rear pylons like we'd do for a nice short cable run.")_

"In other words, you could throw some massive EM interference around what you were carrying as a nice little bonus. For customs privacy."

_He wasn't thinking deviously enough. And I was getting just a smidge vicariously impatient._

_("Or to null out communications from whoever's inside. Sweetheart, are you going to just open that damn door already and show me some of the wood-paneled shag opulence we're both expecting?")_

_Surely there must be some touch of a person inside._

"You know, I'll almost be glad to see Hannah. She may be a firebrand but she's got a personality.

_I couldn't disagree with him on that one. Either clause. Hannah, as the door opened, could be seen sprawled full-length on a white leather couch in the middle of the living area. Underfoot was the same white flooring and a few white plastic tables were shoved to one side of the room, faithfully magnetically clamped to each other. She—or somebody—had pushed in a few gigantic recliners to the center of the room, creating a sort of seating circle. The walls glowed white, except for a door ahead and one to either side, and the ceiling was the only exception. Jerome glanced up and whistled reflexively, seeing the ceiling of the docking bay overhead as if the entire roof of the ship was absent. It was just a neat little trick with a display and a few sensors, lord knew I'd been doing it for years, but you tended to forget how effective it was when done on a large scale. Hannah glanced up absently, swirling a clear liquid around in a belled clear plastic cup._

"Seven thousand four hundred twenty six and a half."

_For once even I was at a loss, and so was Jerome. He goggled at her blankly for a moment as she drained her cup—flung it against the wall, where it skittered to a stop and added a touch of character to the room—and stood up._

"Rivets and bolts visible from here. I counted. Look…."

_She looked like she was trying to swallow a bowling ball as her mouth worked in evidently unfamiliar ways._

"I'm sorry about back there, OK? I thought I'd lost Angela, now you get her back, but in the process I get debriefed by the military and you tear me away from safety once again….I don't even know where we're going or who the hell you are to command that kind of pull. And don't give me the cute / fierce act."

_For an apology it came out more like an attack, and Jerome raised an eyebrow at her, evidently assessing how to respond. I vocalized a sort of 'eh' at him, leaving the situation up to him as usual when it came to interactions like this._

"All right, you want to know what we're doing and why. I really can't talk about why, but you've seen trouble at how many PTMC facilities lately? You can put that together easily enough. As for what…we've got some clues that this all started from a bad transmission from the main facility on Mercury, piggybacking on an official update. I'm hoping to find clues that will give some better idea how to resolve this, and I'm on the track of unraveling something that means we can use local forces for a bunch of cleanup and concentrate on the really dangerous places. Satisfied?"

_It was a pretty flimsy-sounding tissue of bullshit unless you had a better guess who was behind it and potentially why, but it had enough truth to make Hamster's scrutinizing gaze bounce off after a few very long moments. She nodded reluctantly._

"Who are you, then, and why me?"

_Jerome's turn to swallow the bowling ball._

"I'm the idiot who saw past the paycheck to the danger and took this on out of a sense of altruism. So far I'm the one who's lived the longest and the one who's gotten any results. I don't know how many after me are waiting in the works before the UEG has to come in and hammer PTMC into glass. And if that happens, I don't know how much longer all those colonies survive. And I don't know how long we have before PTMC's stalling unravels into inevitable disaster."

_Put baldly like that, it did sound pretty stupid._

"There are times I wish I'd been with my parents when the rock came in. But if I pull this off, the paycheck will be enough to buy a private resort planetoid. And if I don't…well, at least I spent the last of my life trying to save my species."

_Put baldly like that, I had a bleak flash of black despair about what I'd do; namely let him. He believed with an innocence that drew me like a moth to a flame that humanity was basically decent. I liked to tell myself that I'd take that decision away from him, take the controls, and bug out with a prejudice, because I'm so ruthless, callous, cold, calculating and all that. Nevertheless…with the terrible conviction only your knowledge of your own limits brings, I knew that against every better judgement I'd let him spend our lives for something like this. But that didn't mean I wouldn't try and make sure it didn't come to that. Jerome shivered suddenly, rubbing down some of his bristling arm hair, and I guiltily checked the sensor logs. That little emotional burst had radiated..something…in an unusual band, and this wasn't the first time, or the first time it'd affected him. Even Hannah looked unexpectedly somber for a moment before determinedly shaking it off._

"And why you? Because you were the best local auxillary force available, and now because you've seen what it's like down there and have proven yourself. I don't have the time to test somebody else, and if I slave your controls through my ship then it'll probably get us both killed and put the UEG one step closer to having to burn out every last facility with primaries to contain this, because they don't know what I've figured out so far. Clear?"

_I sure didn't want to have to fly a fucking graceless shuttle AND worry about the combat part. It'd slow me down, and that was playing games with his life, and that was a compromise I wouldn't make. Jerome looked old. And tired. And sounded worryingly flat. Hamster stood up a little straighter, nodding._

"I always hated idealists, you know. But I guess there's worse ones to take orders from…Boss."

_Truth, Justice, and the Corbell Way. Jerome nodded back at her and tiredly rounded the tables to open the hatch to what about _had_ to be a bedroom._

"I'll go lay in our course to the Mercury facility. Uh. Do you want to file a flight plan or just use your clearance to warn traffic away from our vector?"

_Like there was going to be much traffic on a vector heading insystem any more. I said as much._

_("Might want to keep it quiet. We'll work on a message torpedo for Dravis. Or I can do it and save you the trouble. You look like hell.")_

("I feel like hell. No, we need to do it. At least let me get out of this crap.")

_It wasn't what I thought a bedroom should look like but it didn't surprise me at this point. The same dull white flooring made an island of a king-sized—white—bed. Jerome closed the hatch again, bending down to peel off his boots, and the entire wall flickered once and the display units built into it projected a seamless image of the common area, only a ghostly circle marking where the hatch seams were. Hannah shook her head from the common area, staring at the closed hatch and mouthing something I could lip-read as 'that poor dumb son of a bitch' even through the display and his little camera button. Jerome snorted derisively and let himself fall on his back to pull off the first boot. It gave me a lovely view of the ceiling overhead, doing its best imitation of empty space up to the station's familiar hangar roof._

_("I take it you're going to leave the video portion off.")_

_While I _could_ see him making a call to the client naked, it depended heavily on the client. This didn't seem the time or the proper organization. Still…what could they do?_

"If I can find the controls. I just hope Hannah can fly this thing, my manual skills are a little rusty."

_He coughed dryly, tossing the first boot over toward the hatch wall where it landed with a thump, delineating the barrier. I wondered offhand if the wall showed the interior of the bedroom to the common area as well, then decided probably not. Not that I cared who saw what, but it would be a lousy default setting. Still, Hamster wasn't making any moves toward the controls and it crossed my mind that we hadn't actually figured out how fast we needed to run to Mercury._

_("So let's talk delta-vee. Honestly, love, how are you holding up? I'm not worried about time, I'm worried about the maneuver beatings on top of it.")_

_Did the best I could to project concern, as the other boot landed on the other side and he shimmied out of the jumpsuit. It made an incongruous patch of black to relieve the visual monotony. Socks came off and got distributed toward the boots, describing lovely slow arcs in the station's low gravity, and he tipped the collar button upward to face the bed before spread-eagling himself on his back on it. I couldn't see more than his feet and crotch from that angle but it was a considerate thought anyway. And made me glad my sense of smell didn't really extend to people any more._

"Depends on what we need to do. Give me a worst-case for after we get to Mercury…"

_At least his heartbeat was starting to slow down. He sounded like we both felt…tired as hell. The real worst-case was that we died over a considerable period of time at the manipulators of misprogrammed drones, or under the hands and knives of my countrymen…but I figured he already knew that. Now what had Dravis said, that had mostly escaped me in the time since he yammered it? A few moments of playback while I thanked my mechanically perfect memory and I frowned, speaking through the button for a change in timbre to keep him on his toes._

_"Dravis said something about Charon and Pluto. He didn't say what, or how, and we've seen no evidence pointing that way."_

"Charon? I wish you were fucking kidding me. How long under normal grav?"

_"Slowboat speed? Call it a week and a half on average. Assuming you mean normal grav internally. In this, a little over a week and you'd actually have a bathroom and room to stand up. I don't know if this will keep that long..."_

_Jerome sighed, and my heart went out to him. It'd been so long since I felt the slam-bang of fragile organs in fragile flesh that it just didn't carry the same impact for me. Literally._

"Well, while we're talking shitty times, let's assume I'm a grunt with a pack, an energy rifle, and a perpetual scowl. How long for a combat-speed run?"

_It was tricky…you had to balance squishy tolerances against time. High G forces for hours, sure, but as you extended that into days or weeks you really started running into medical issues. Twenty five external Gs was hauling serious ass for anything civilian, and imposed its penalties._

_"I don't have the data for military lately, but in the Carrot it'd be down to about four days. You'd be spitting up your ribcage. Hamster would look like she came out of the microwave. And it gets better. Think about transmissions."_

_Because I sure didn't want to. Jerome rolled over and punched a—white—pillow, then took off his gloves and dropped one on either side of the bed._

"Hours. Fuck. We could already be blown. Why do you do this to me?"

_I knew he was half-joking, but it still felt like half a knife stabbed through half of my heart. I let a little indignity show through at that. Damn him for his idealism and his stubborn, stubborn essentially honest character anyway._

_"For what it's worth if I'd had the pieces this morning that call would have gone to voicemail and been deleted…and I would have found some excuse for you and I to go to some exotic Saturnian ring hotel until this all collapsed one way or another!"_

_Barely, just barely, I bit off the 'And you know it's still an option!' that was just on the end of my tongue. He didn't need that. _

"And if I'd realized everything this would have led to, I'd have been packed before you spun up."

_His voice was a bit muffled, as he was face-down in the—white—duvet._

"Being on the side of PTMC and preventing the UEG military from eradicating their operations root and branch, and that being the best way to prop up civilization…I never wanted to be a hero, or have a hero's journey. Fucking Mercury to Pluto! Aren't they supposed to be more internal?"

_I had to laugh at that._

_"You think we're heroes? Let's see. Stupidly charging in against impossible odds for love of lady fair, fighting for a bigger goal, gathering renown. Well, noble knight, your saddled princess is telling you that with a vault of diamonds you can write your narrative in any fashion an it please ye."_

"Prithee, oh wise steed, I beseech thee, how long must we be on our dusty road at a gallop or a trot, as we ride ever sunwards?"

_I was going to have to somehow force a datalink back home if this kept up. A bit of mental math, a lot more mental gymnastics to figure out how to phrase it. It wasn't even my species' history! I gave up after a few moments of failing to come up with anything better than RenFaire bastardizations and just told him what he was asking for to begin with._

_"Ten hours at five, twelve at three. You could get some sleep in the bath and be relatively unaffected. When you call Dravis…"_

_A pointed little reminder._

_"…see if you can find out WHY he's name-dropping Charon. Sure, I want to visit another GX just as bad as any other aerospace geek, but that's about all out there of any relevance."_

_Jerome sighed again, pulling a—white—pillow over his head for a moment before rolling over and sitting up and flopping back down facing the other way. I could see his lined face now, and he quirked a wan smile._

"I'll take the twelve and stay in better shape at the end of it. Let me go tell Hamster to get us out of here. Might as well have our little chat and then head insystem."

_"At least put on a shirt again before you call your paymaster. You're rumpled."_

"And you're an asshole."

_"I suck and blow, all right, but it'll cost you."_

"Keep it up and I'll install some of these displays on you. Make you disappear, then your vanity would shrivel right up."

_Oh, the things I could do while invisible to the naked eye. I mean, you couldn't do anything about the noise or thrust without completely slaughtering any semblance of a performance envelope, and they'd burn right off any time I got back into an atmosphere or transonic…but I didn't mention it. Jerome slung himself off the bed, moving stiffly like an old man for the first few steps until he opened the hatch and stuck his head through. Hannah did a double-take at the sight of his exposed chest then sighed._

"Better be business and not pleasure, boss."

"I'm too stressed to have a list, much less to put you on it. My life's rough enough."

_He shot right back._

"Just get us out of here and hold station where I can get clear shot for a tightbeam hookup with Shiva, need to brief my boss on exactly how this is going off the rails."

_Hannah whistled grimly, picking herself up off the sofa and gathering her helmet under her arm reflexively._

"I hear and obey oh about-to-be-chewed-a-new-asshole High and Mighty One. Where are we headed after that, and how much will our hair be on fire? And how do you want the squawk?"

_Jerome grinned at her, the humorless kind that just mostly exposed pointed canines._

"Mercury. Three internal, dodge if you can and tightbeam if you can't. Let's keep this quiet…and approach from the shadow side."

_Hannah looked at him in disbelief, opening the hatch to the fully-instrumented cockpit._

"Shit, if I wanted to fry in Hell I'd just sleep more. Don't worry, I won't play Icarus, not even for you."

_And the hatch closed—and locked—behind her. I could feel the transport's systems coming alive and I hastily pulled my metaphorical fingers out of its visible systems, but not quite fast enough to avoid changing some telltales on the network monitors. Jerome stood there for a long moment before turning and retreating from the empty room as well. The hatch to the bedroom sealed behind him and he shimmied into his shirt again, buttoning it and running a futile hand through his prematurely greying hair._

"All right…let's get this over with."


	22. High Performance Revue

Chapter 22: High Performance Revue

"There are moments when I think I'm going crazy

And it's going to be all right

Everything will be so different

When I'm on the stage tonight."

-Abba

I felt like hell. I had plenty of confirmation that I looked like hell. And we'd barely started. The crushing weight of the entire affair felt like my soul itself was stuck in a high-gee flat spin, and for the life of me—perhaps literally—I couldn't sort out why I was so unwilling to cut and run. I owed PTMC nothing. When it came to it…I didn't owe humanity that much either. Somehow the species would survive whatever form it took. Ultimately…it was the biggest assignment I'd ever gotten, and for once doing something good for more than just a corporation or a splinter sect or whoever had the raw currency. With a deep breath I closed my eyes, pulled my upper lip between my teeth, and bit down until I could focus properly on the immediate sensations. It was Zen enough, but it took a lot less time…and the best way to banish the residual sting afterwards thanks to my sharp teeth was to smile for a while.

This time, though, it wasn't working terribly well.

"All right, enough fucking around. Throw on a departure view and at least give me a couple beats warning before patching through."

Damn if I was going to put on my boots, but I could at least be a little respectful. In the end it didn't matter, there wasn't anything that something as petty as PTMC could do to stop us. Well, barring interdiction by high-velocity debris, or primaries, or etc etc. No, we were our own biggest danger thanks to my sense of duty. In a way, I was relieved. Events were grinding through their motions, and the only way for us to squeeze between the gears was to jam them solidly. Which required force and speed. Horizons closed down, intent narrowed into a diamond-hard glimmer of willpower, and it all came down to giving into the animal instincts with a partner. It was….satisfying.

_"I'll bet that floor texture makes it easy to clean up vomit. Check this out!"_

And with that slightly disturbing comment as the only lead-in, the entire ship vanished around me. I was hovering backwards in the hangar, watching Quentin wave to me as I sailed out into space! Reflexively I slowly exhaled, skin prickling as I jumped for the hatch—only to sprawl my full length out on the floor with a thump hard enough to dislodge my breath.

"What the FUCK?"

I could hear Jenny's pleased cackle as I gasped once or twice, reconciling myself to the feelings under my stocking feet and the continued presence of air and heat, then picked myself slowly back up.

_"Now I think I see why the interior is this boring…you could do just about anything with these displays."_

I should've expected it, but she always at least showed me the cockpit, or her, or…something. I turned around—staring down at bleached pocked globe of the Moon as if the hull wasn't there. The only thing that spoiled the effect was the white bed floating there with me…and two boots and two gloves also hovering in apparent orbit. The effect was impressive, even though I was jaded and used to it in smaller forms. I couldn't help letting out a whistle of admiration.

"Does this thing have a directional speaker array? How about scent projectors?"

Jenny sounded puzzled as I turned back around.

_"Now that you mention it. The climate controls for this whole ship are fairly overbuilt."_

Of course they were.

"Don't you get it?"

I asked, smiling for the first time in a while. I could see another floating bed between here and the slowly retreating lunar station , a scowling Hannah sitting in a white chair and playing with invisible controls to my right, and looking left I saw Jenny—looking achingly familiar in an Io uniform—leaning on the angular hull of the Pyro in the cargo bay. She waved and blew a kiss, shaking her head.

_"Enlighten me, then?"_

Wasn't it obvious?

"Pussy! Or cock, or whatever. Plain and simple. There could be anything on these screens, except for the furniture it'd be like being there. Fast humidity and temperature changes, relevant smells and directional sounds, enough grunt to change the images to respond to the occupants..and a big fantastic bed. And I thought carpets and paintings and odd woods were luxurious…man, if you could simulate touchable things, the human race would die in an orgy of self-absorbed masturbation."

Jenny cracked up at that. I could see her image leaning against the Pyro for support.

_"Never thought both of us would be that provincial. Looks like we've got a few lessons in hedonism to learn yet, doesn't it?"_

"Well, we're out of practice…"

I said teasingly.

_"Speaking of touchable. You know I've got my own little projects running."_

Her image sashayed down where the hallway had been, until the hatch appeared to open and she was standing before me. I knew it was just her tap into the image feeds, because I hadn't felt the air move from the opening, but it felt so good to see her standing there without the weight of a helmet on me. Provocatively, blowing me a kiss, she undid her ponytail and shook her long blue hair down around her shoulders and over her face. A brush of it away from one eye and she winked it at me, running her long fingers teasingly along her hidden collarbones and down her cleavage to gently cup her chest. Despite everything we'd been through recently I felt myself respond, a familiar set of impulses that had nothing to do with time, place, or logic.

_"You know…"_

She said softly, sweetly.

"_I probably shouldn't admit to this dirty little thought right now, but…"_

It'd been way too long. I could almost hear my heartbeat.

_"….you're live in three, two…"_

And with a blown kiss and an evil giggle she vanished, leaving a open video window showing the PTMC logo and a short countdown to connection. Once again I was quite sure that the spanking and bending-over that her antics called for were not best enjoyed separately, and torn between fuming and laughing JUST managed to get my hands back out of my pockets and the situation properly arranged before Dravis' unamused visage appeared on the screen.

It was probably just as well to have had the distraction.

"Material Defender One Zero Three Two…how _good_ of you to call. Would you be so kind as to speak to the mystery of your recent actions, and their applicability to the matter for which you have been hired?"

Well shit. He wasn't going to rattle me this early.

"Mr. Dravis, the data collected this far suggests an attack vector, a method, and enables a practical method of determining probable results by facility type—which handily reprioritizes strike order."

I could sling around the big words too.

"A trip insystem will enable forensic analysis on the PTMC data relaying system and testing of the current hypothesis on local facilities…as well as being part of the initially specified plan."

Bullseye. Dravis glanced down at a printout I could barely see on the corner of his desk. Jenny expanded the video window and I could see that half of his office had been taken over with boxes of paper of which this was merely the top few summary sheets.

"Yes…"

He admitted after a sour moment's reflection.

"We are in receipt of your unconventional transmission. Shiva does not install any updates until we receive confirmation that our outermost facilities have completed patching, so we have remained unaffected."

You mean you put it off until you find out how badly the little unimportant places break, and when you found out that it was worse than usual, elected to hire a mercenary instead of paying your tech geeks the overtime.

"Nevertheless it may interest you to know that I concur with your assessment."

Now that _was_ a shock. I'd been expecting a lot more of a fight. It was worth bouncing this off my partner in crime.

("Anything more wrong?")

Long habits made it easy to subvocalize without moving a visible muscle, and I covered it with external dialog while I waited for her reply. A block of text flashed up beside the screen, blinking the important words, which I read back as naturally as I could.

"After investigation of the main Mercury relay I had planned to swing outsystem to the Venus nickel-iron mine—specified as facility number five—to test the current behavioral hypothesis."

Well, it was a good thing somebody had been listening.

_("Whole fucking relay's down. No wonder I can't bounce to Earth!")_

It was a rude little surprise in my ear. No wonder Dravis wanted me insystem ASAP. If you had interplanetary traffic, there weren't many interplanetary relays with the power to transmit tightbeam and multiplex effectively. PTMC operated one in Mercury and a repeater in the Belt, and didn't see the need for more. The UEG had a few rumored deep-space ones but the same rumors also had them pretty well out of the ecliptic plane so you didn't just stumble across them…or their transmissions. It explained a lot. Abnormal traffic, the one major path for it removed, everybody falling back on other transmitters and clogging the airwaves something terrible…as if the ionosphere wasn't roiling enough already.

"And?"

Sammy prompted. Unasked, Jenny zoomed the video in on his face. Despite the loss of resolution from the zoom, I could see the traces of makeup caking his entire face, a small streak of telltale flesh tones extended into his thinning hair. If this morning's pallor had gotten that bad…

"I do not appreciate getting secondhand news of our contractors and our facilities from our leasees. Or our executive officers. "

You could tell a lot about a person from who they were when they were stretched to the breaking point. Right now I could tell that even this hadn't wrung the suit out of what used to be the man.

"Your involvement of the military was regrettable. Almost criminal."

And if the Potemkin hadn't been there...I raised my hand, cutting him off mid-word."

"Point of order. The goal remains containment. Had the drones escaped the guardpost entrance, they might have endangered the rest of Tycho Base. They are equipped with short-range communication systems and could not be permitted within communication range. I could have collapsed the entrance, but that would have shut in drones primarily based on the design of mining hardware…made to dig out from precisely such circumstances. And I could not have reached the reactor in the face of those numbers. "

It would've taken every missile in every pod—except the last few-and about every erg of energy in Jenny's plant. And with itchy-fingered artillery standing by, not to mention the fighter jocks, I might not have survived the trip out either.

"Further, the UEG has conducted combat operations against one of their own leased facilities."

I thought that was a neat touch. Dravis didn't.

"At the request of an authorized representative of the owner!"

He snapped back, a bead of sweat gradually collecting in a furrow of his forehead.

"A regrettable incident. Nevertheless I trust you at least gathered useful information from the debriefed soldiers?..."

I _knew_ I'd forgotten something. Jenny squeaked in dismay in my ear, and threw up a block of text once again. When you didn't have the data…sometimes you had to bullshit a little. We knew what had happened and when, but we knew it from the machines and not from the humans. It'd have to do.

"Timestamps indicate that once the code was patched, the system patched the backup controller as well and then went into intruder defense mode after data verification…the encryption makes it difficult to determine exactly why."

It was sort of news to me.

("_Earned a raise there._")

("We'll talk.")

Dravis frowned at me, grotesquely magnified until Jenny zoomed out again to my great relief.

"Mr. Corbell, you are a man of a thousand maddening layers! Now we have another three issues. Encryption, your working hypothesis, and whether or not I should listen to our CFO and have you tarred and feathered!"

The temptation to bite back was as strong as it ever was, but cheap shots wouldn't really help anything. I wasn't ungrateful for that order, because it gave me a chance to progressively defuse myself. Jenny's text wrote scatologically improbable suggestions for a reply and I flicked them away with a swift eyedart that she caught, blanking the invective.

"One layer for each facility and there ought to be enough of a core to appreciate the check…"

I half-drawled, watching that droplet roll down into his scowling eyebrows with a slightly vindictive feeling of glee.

"As for the encryption, I succeeded in breaking into the system by treating it as a hostile communications channel."

_("You could call it that…")_

"In theory it could be reverted to its original state but there are practical issues…"

(_"Uh, boss, you're in way over your head here. Stall. Now.")_

She was using her don't-fuck-with-me voice, and I listened.

"…and I need data confirmation from an operational mine."

_("Good boy.")_

Dravis sighed, raised a hand as if to wipe his forehead and reconsidered. Instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to leave makeup splotches on his fingers when he put them down, tenting his hands in front of him.

"It goes without saying that we all will be quite intently waiting for that précis. What of your preliminary findings?"

Selling this was the hard part. I wished I could just have Jenny explain it to him, and tune out until the screaming was done.

"The science outpost featured drones performing routine experiments on improper subjects. I was only attacked when I attacked first, or collided with a drone hard enough to damage it. The guard outpost was operating in routine internal defense mode, having subdued and captured improper targets. I was only attacked when attempted decryption failed and the facility went into emergency response mode. The lunar power station, I theorize, transmitted a normal power beam of normal intensity to an improper target with an improper focal density, and only attacked my predecessor after he attacked a drone first."

Put that way, it didn't hurt quite as bad. I'd gone through such a wild cavalcade of emotions already that I was already starting to get some mental distance. Either that or the shock was setting in, which I really could only spare the next twelve hours for.

"So far it appears that the fail-safes have been either removed or functionally inverted, along with the basic encryption of all operating systems and essential running code. If in a mine I observe drones prioritizing less-dense, moving targets—people, instead of ore veins—that may give us the reprioritization of all these facilities. I have my questions for you as well…"

And they were big ones. There was something that had been gnawing at the back of my brain since finding that bogus update in Tawny's mail and since Dravis had mentioned Shiva's timing, but it wouldn't quite gel when dealing with this fossil.

"Why do intelligence reports suggest this is an invasion aimed at Earth? What's so interesting at Pluto? Were you planning to tell me the relay is down?"

The fossil flattened his palms against his desk and half-strained to get up, looking like he wanted to reach through the screen and devour my eyeballs whole.

"Have you already forgotten this morning?! We have no control over our drones and our facilities are hotbeds of mechanical treachery!"

That would've made a great soundbite on the evening news, except the revelation that PTMC was a bunch of control freaks who had loyalty problems wasn't news.

"Since I choose to operate under the assumption that you have _not_ been abusing your access privileges to dig through our top secret data…"

…Uh oh. I subvocalized a questioning sort of noise, but Jenny just tossed up a N above the video window, then replaced it with a '…yet'. For once she was innocent, we were just good extrapolators. Of course when you'd seen everything go wrong as badly as we had over our lifetimes, it came in handy.

"We had been treating the relay failure as an internal problem. Obviously communications attempts were problematic, and nobody could be reached via tightbeam. A repair ship and two escorts were dispatched from Earth facilities. Several hours ago we received the fringes of repeating signals from their distress beacons."

I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, and when I opened them again Dravis had sat back down.

"Fragmentary information gleaned suggests that they were fired on by the relay's automated defenses after transmitting their valid credentials."

_("Fail-deadly…")_

Came Jenny's speculative whisper, and I nodded grimly.

"And is the relay running standard PTMC facility software? "

"Hardly relevant, of course it is heavily customized but…"

Dravis trailed off, doing the addition as I had just a few moments ago.

"…but at base yes. If you believe you can reverse the encryption and return our facilities to our control, this relay would be an excellent proof-of-concept location."

More droplets of sweat were forming. He looked worse than I did, and I could hardly blame him. Strictly speaking, we were contracted to blow up the relay too…something that had taken significant time, effort, and lives to construct, and something that tied the solar system together to a surprising degree. I wasn't the only one who had him over a barrel, and he couldn't change the laws of physics either. I almost felt sorry for him, but I put it down as an unkind thought and banished it. Truth be told I didn't especially want to knock it out either, but if my distant recollections of public-interest articles were correct, there was another route.

"Been a long time since the bar trivia contest in question but isn't there some kind of geothermal coring being used for power?"

"Precisely. Four equidistant thermal taps, running almost from crust to core, and pole-to-pole used as an access tunnel with as little hardware on the surface as possible. A satellite in stationary orbit transmits the beam to the relay which is stationed at a La Grange point in the perpetual shadow of Mercury. Material Defender, it would be preferable for you to destroy the relay than to annihilate the power plant…"

Time to twist the knife a little deeper.

"Is the power plant running standard PTMC facility software?"

Oh-so-innocently. Because the last thing I needed was a reactor spitting hot radioactive plasma or lava or whatever at me when I was in the middle of a planet already. Without preamble Dravis reached up and toggled off the audio on his end, then glanced down to work with the displays on his desk. His mouth moved, but aided by Jenny's lip-reading skills and instant captioning I could see that his brief storm of invective held only a dry upbraiding of my sort of hired guns. Empty-headed weasels and the like. I stopped paying attention to the translation when he started talking to his secretary—poor woman—to get some relevant files.

("This is going well.")

I commented to Jenny. She flashed her image up beside Dravis, mocking his window slightly by having herself appear in the shipping containers we called home.

_("Don't commit yourself to any reversions, bossman. I don't know if I can do it—but I'll touch on that with you after this. I don't know if you can explain it away either. Just ask for a data downlink of the safety protocol portion of the standard facility code when he's back on.")_

I sighed, holding up a hand in front of my face out of old habit to prevent my expressions being read and recorded by the cameras. Just when I thought I had everything figured out, complications kept creeping in. It wasn't until a moment later that I caught myself wishing for a nap in a sunny patch, reconsidered it in light of our destination, and fought hard to stifle a laugh.

("And defenses. I assume you need to examine the relay while it's _working_…")

_("There's not a lot I can do with the power off unless you want to do a hardlink EVA. I'm not fond of the idea.")_

Neither was I. I'd gotten out of the cockpit once—well technically twice—already on this mission in the hostile zone and didn't want to repeat the experience. It made carrying all the armor around kind of pointless.

("How hardened can…")

Dravis reached back up to toggle the volume back on and I dropped it and my hand.

"Ahem. The generator and turbine operate via embedded logic. Read-only. If you can infiltrate the facility you should be able to disable it in a fashion that avoids lasting devastation."

_("Do we fucking LOOK like civil engineers?")_

("Do we even look civil? Shaddup.")

I shot back amusedly.

"I suppose our PTMC code would get us just as far as it got the last folks. All right. Send me the schematics of the core facility and the relay and I'll do what I can. And a listing of the active defenses I'll be facing. What else did I need from you…"

It was an absent enough comment, but it sent Dravis' metaphorical hackles bristling. I was still trying to pin down that elusive idea as long as I had him in communication.

"Do be economical with your time and mine, Material Defender. You have much to do and the clock is ticking for all of us before the UEG stops accepting our assurances that we are handling the situation. Both of us have already overestimated your ability to deliver results."

A man couldn't take that lying down. I wasn't completely a human, and I wasn't lying down, so I gritted my teeth and stood it, although Jenny's image flashed up next to Dravis and started making calming hand gestures.

"Listen, we have more important things to get out in the air here, but I will just say this. And especially to the CFO. It's easy to leave a sinking ship, but what kind of rat is willing to go back in and try to make it float again? If you have another idiot waiting in the wings that you think is more capable and can get better results in less time, by all means send them in…because I will be busy accumulating distance!"


	23. Hot Seat

Chapter 23: Hot Seat

"You turn on a dime without a warning

You're a saint and a sinner from midnight to morning

I don't know which is worst from the rose to the thorn

You're a blessing and a curse…"

-Wayne Baker Brooks

_Men! This was getting us nowhere. Why, oh why, did everything have to come down to a dickwaving contest? Cocks weren't going to save civilization, and there wasn't much I could do to intervene except put a big black square over whichever mouth was spewing shit and cut that side of the audio._

"And another thing…"

_Oh god, he was on a tirade._

"What about the other orbital and administrative stations?"

_Oh god, he had a point. It didn't take long for it to worm its way under my skin like a bucket of cold water down the back of the neck._

"They have minimal automation, but the shuttles can be run via remote, do those tie into the intruder defense system?"

_PTMC planned for saboteurs, terrorists, and internal riots / strike attempts / protests, which meant that they weren't likely to have anything worse than security shuttles and a whole lot of sleepy-gas dispensers under the control of station security. I could see Dravis pause to put aside whatever excuse for feelings he might have in order to consider the question._

"….They are. And to forestall your next question, they are running standard PTMC facility software and should have patched on time…and should therefore be added to your facilities list."

_I blanked my image from the other view window before my look of horror could show, and instead threw up a diagram of my shipself in cutaway. A little blue figure representing Jerome blinked once. I did the same for Hannah's shuttle, with a pink figure representing her, and thirty dotted blue figures standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the passenger bay—then shrunk both ship and shuttle to put them in scale with the image of a typical processing station. I then started spewing blue figures beneath it until I'd hit the average complement of an average station at well over two hundred. It was fucking untenable! We couldn't evac with the capacity we had, we couldn't take out the shuttles—at least I hoped we wouldn't have to—and the idea of blowing up the entire station would require a concentrated level of firepower we honestly couldn't bring to bear without neutralizing the defenses first…even assuming either of our consciences would let us kill that many people in cold blood. To give him the full picture I started scattering security shuttles on the display for good measure, coding them crosshatched red, and stopped at thirty. The display was getting crowded. I watched Jerome's expression as it sunk in. The wrinkle of his upper lip to show teeth was under conscious control but fading._

"I'm going to ignore your implication…I don't have that kind of firepower. Those facilities need to be neutralized by a different method."

_Dravis smirked, although it looked drawn taut._

"The precise methods are up to you, Material Defender, within the terms of your contract. We are not opposed to you working miracles, as long as they can be properly documented."

"Oh, don't worry, I'll fulfill my obligations…"

_He ground out from between his teeth. I blanked my display, took Dravis' window, overlaid it on a diagram of Shiva, and animated a little black-and-yellow radiation trefoil moving from my shipself toward that arm of Shiva, throwing the text "Karmic obligation" below. It got him to cough-laugh in spite of himself._

"Now, Material Defender, what else did you need from me?"

_Any residual guilt I had about Jerome not getting the chance to call in sooner was thoroughly gone by now. I threw up a little reminder on the display, blanking the treasonous idea of nuking the executive wing of Shiva. "Invasion?" and "Pluto", because dammit if it was an invasion it was pretty ineffective so far, and Pluto was the wrong way entirely. Jerome shook his head and headed off on another tack entirely._

"We're all on the same side here. From my results thus far my professional calculation is that you can clear out your affected science outposts with internal forces provided nobody takes the first shot at a drone, or if offensive action is required, EM jamming sufficient to overwhelm drone comms is used. I'll leave it up to the code wonks to figure out if the curious phenomenon will draw drones to investigate and experiment. Estimated risk; low to medium. Affected outposts shouldn't have to be blown in place as long as rescue forces stay away from the reactor room."

_Unconsciously he straightened his shoulders and folded his arms behind his back, as if he was answering for a review board at Io. I understand too well the impulse, returning to behaviors that had served us well previously. Sammy looked like he'd eaten a whole lemon but was keeping his silence for the moment._

"…..although based on a nonstandard defense protocol, it may be possible to cause the reactor to go into an enforced shutdown by simply evading the plasma venting."

_Dravis wasn't going to sit quiet for that one._

"Mr. Corbell, be so kind as to explain what you mean. The standard emergency shutdown protocol simply drops first-stage magnetic confinement and releases plasma to the surroundings."

_Bastard! Yeah, that was all well and good as long you didn't care about hard radiation or keeping anything intact with a flashpoint of, oh, say, less than granite, in the immediate area. It gave me belated shivers just to think about that. No WONDER he'd half-snarkily reminded us to seek an exit before we initiated that process. We'd done a pretty neat second-stage confinement shutdown and exposed antimatter to matter…with satisfyingly predictable results. Hell, we'd only gotten clear because the reactor would drop its first stage and put all possible remaining power to the second stage in case of damage, and it took a little time for that to bleed through. For once I was actually thankful for the alterations, since a broad-spectrum plasma flood would have left us in a mildly nasty state. Hot hull plating, all the decontamination, just a pain in the ass all around._

"That….wasn't what I observed. Some kind of focused weak point spat confined plasma at the ship at its last position and and predicted positions based on motion between shots."

_Dravis nodded, the news evidently not surprising him. Just one more thing we hadn't been told?_

"That is an intruder defense mechanism, intended to be directed against anything which does a certain magnitude of damage to the structure or passes a certain proximity without safety mechanisms being temporarily disabled."

_Guess keeping those protestors away from their reactors took being willing to melt them into slag and giving the survivors cancer. Another interlock, interpicked. Oh, the news would be short-stroking themselves over any of this. Jerome bared his teeth this time and had to rub his cheeks with a hand to give himself a modicum of control._

"Well, I appreciate the disclosure after the fact."

_He said, eyebrow arched._

"As you evidently are familiar with the system, whether or not it will run out of plasma after prolonged engagement is more your question than mine. I will observe that with the reactor shut down, the main data banks could be purged and restored from backup media per standard procedures, and that ought to eliminate the issue once power is restored. Whether or not the drones will respond or need to be destroyed is a relatively minor factor."

_When did he get to be the strategic one? Dravis seemed to be a bit surprised, leaning forward with a half-smile that worried me. What was he getting Jerome into? What was the boy getting himself further into, apart from 'trouble'?_

_("Careful…")_

_I whispered to him. I had no idea of the game he was playing, except hopefully it was at least the long one._

"And your analysis of our leased military facilities? Can those be handled with internal forces? I notice you are NOT recommending wholesale destruction, as I initially spoke of."

_Now it made sense. He wanted to call Jerome's contract void and have an excuse to not pay it, and handle it with shuttles and etc for nothing more out of pocket. Did Jerome see what he was digging was another grave for the both of us?_

"Speaking on terms purely of the facility, all drones would need to be neutralized, the reactor allowed to vent to shutdown—longer, with battery backups or surface solar—and all power crosslinks would need to be severed. Without precise data on PTMC internal force capabilities or craft types…"

_An inviting pause, which the lizard-king of HR made no move to fill. Jerome continued, disappointed._

"I would regard it as a very dangerous endeavor. Not only will you need fighter craft that are small enough to fit through all relevant hallways, they would also have to possess enough firepower to rapidly neutralize the various drones and enough armor to make them non-expendable. That is a difficult niche to work in, as I know well."

_I sighed with relief, letting him hear half of it. He wasn't _STUPID_…just honest. Which didn't always end up the same way. Dravis didn't look happy either._

"We are both acquainted with the operational difficulties of the concept. You know you were not the first. Speaking of other occupiers of your niche, what is your opinion of the Pyros Industrial Group's GL spaceframe for this neutralization proposal?"

_Brow furrowed for a moment, then he outright chuckled._

"It could be done. Kinetic penetrators for knock-back and explosive ammunition for damage multiplication, but you'd need fuck-off size Vulcans or cannons and computerized firing based on aimpoint intersecting any angle of a known drone shape. That's the only way of avoiding return fire, with the tissue-paper armor those things have to carry."

_Dravis nodded, writing something out of view._

"And if you wanted to neutralize the entire facility without entry?"

_He never even hesitated._

"Primaries from low orbit. Anything less might risk the drones escaping. Look…and I recognize this isn't my department…"

_An inviting pause, that Dravis did nothing to fill, giving him plenty of rope._

"…well, I'd offer to cooperate with the military. With plentiful fire support and fighter access, they could rescue their people and save your facilities."

_THAT didn't please Sammy D. He grimaced and shook his head._

"Thanks to your…little stunt…at Tycho, Material Defender, you may be interested to know that we have already received a strongly-worded proposal of cooperation. If we accept, then after the military bases it is only a matter of time until the UEG requires that all PTMC facilities undergo the same treatment. You will hopefully understand that we prefer to handle this as an internal matter..but you are running out of time."

_JEROME was running out of time? Dravis had his corporate ass in a sling, he meant. Dravis continued before Jerome could get a word out of his open mouth._

"This meeting is good news in that you have given the possibility that a facility could be shut down and reprogrammed, or 'on the fly' restored to our operational control. I will tell the UEG that we are evaluating a program to return our facilities to their former states without the need for drastic intervention and that will buy you more time. In the meantime, you will immediately downlink all encryption channel data and the procedures required to get into the Tycho guardpost systems."

_Uh oh. I flashed my face on the screen next to Dravis, red exclamation marks around my worried expression that needed no faking. For all we'd jawed over this issue before, we hadn't discussed how to resolve it._

"Stand by, Mr. Dravis."

_Jerome made a cut-throat gesture although I hadn't really worried about him not picking up the cue and I cut the audio and video but left the transmission active, probably resulting in the puzzlement of Hamster._

_"It's that time again. Look…I can give him a filter to translate their code to Rihaansu and back again without betraying myself directly, but it's handing our enemies a loaded gun."_

_There wasn't time to engage in the usual dialog, I kept on going._

_"Who the fuck do you think knows it? Our saboteur, maybe others, and who do you think could have given it to humanity? Either somebody's really broken the code like we claimed to do, which puts us in the crosshairs of the saboteurs, or one of us is a traitor, and that puts us back in the crosshairs again. Once again the stakes ratchet up for the species and leave us less room…"_

_THAT was his call. Strict logic and logistics was starting to pull us out of the nightmare of cleansing every facility, but this would put us back into an even bigger mess. I couldn't guard us from all threats._

"…If you weren't here would that be crackable with any available software package?"

_Tangential thinking. He'd come so far…my image shrugged as I thought about it._

_"If we'd been able to get close enough without the encoded recognition signal in the first place, you mean? Uh. "_

_It was a good question. My hardware was state of the fucking art, and part of the reason we lived so cheaply. Although I felt a momentary pang of guilt, I stepped on it hard as ill-suited for the moment and got down to some seriously time-compressed pondering and evaluating all sorts of commo gear specs against what we could have plausibly gotten. It wasn't until I started thinking a little closer to home that an idea reared its nasty little head from the files of back-dated accounts payable in full. It wouldn't cover our trail much, but….after this was over, if we survived, if we managed to collect, this would add a few zeros to the 'get the boy the hell out of the solar system' fund, and we'd need every last hundredth-credit we could scrounge in a damn hurry._

_"Maybe. Have you fucked with 'your' stock portfolio?"_

_He laughed again, shaking his head wryly._

"I know better."

_"Good! All right, here's what we'll do. I can save our asses a little if you can be a good little cue-card reader. Live in five unless you say otherwise."_

_Jerome nodded, looking relieved._

"I got nothing. Fuck, I just want to get this over with."

_I counted down with a held-up hand, faded in audio with a beep on two, and video as the last finger folded down. Dravis was mid-sip of something from a plain coffee mug and put it down as soon as he saw Jerome on the screen. I put up the text and listened as he obediently read it off._

"All the decryption hardware and software I use is a package from Vincent Fontaine. It's hard-linked, no read access, to the spaceframe. He may have another one in stock but I can't get you either running code or decouple the module itself and still have it work."

_To somebody who knew him well, you could read the delighted laughter on every inch of the boy's body. Vincent did make highly custom modules for the discerning private customer, and his encryption/decryption hardware deserved the business we were pushing his way. More to the point, due to a little favor we'd done for him when he was broke and struggling against some of the bigger firms, we'd agreed that we'd take our fee as a percentage of his corporate sales. And this was going to cost PTMC large, large money. As for the danger it'd put him in…Vincent was a sleaze. He started getting some big customers and must've started really resenting the rakeoff. After the first couple checks, Jerome was more than willing to call off the marker at the slightest mention, but not three weeks later, a 'chance' aircar collision had sent a flaming transport loaded with iron pipes down into our shipping-container home while we were out on a last-minute job. Once was coincidence. Two weeks after that, a hit squad had gone for Jerome directly when he was otherwise engaged with a young lady of negotiable was enemy action, and things had been quiet on the home front more than long enough to make Mr. Fontaine the only plausible suspect. We didn't really have court-solid evidence, but I was a little irked and chose to stage my own little accident right back. The mop-up took a bit of brainstorming, but it was pretty effective. We found a transport with a gigantic kiln scheduled to fly over Vincent's office, infiltrated the transportation yard, sabotaged the restraints and dumped the bodies into the open kiln. At the appropriate time in the flight plan, I went through the traffic path at speed, squawking a valid ident, spooking a taxi that veered predictably into the path of the transport, and its weave was enough—as we'd planned—to snap the restraints and smash half of Vincent's office with the kiln filled with the remnants of his hit squad. The occasional percentage arrived after that, but from looking at public transaction records he'd broken the sales up so none of them really went over the amount we'd agreed on, hence screwing us out of the cut. PTMC wouldn't divide the sale. It'd be the entire amount up front, he'd be too greedy to write them a half-price discount just to screw us, it'd put him in danger for his life, we'd get our rakeoff, and he would be one less enemy to worry about._

_If Jerome had been upset, I might have been a little sorry for it, but I'm a nasty bitch when crossed and if I could roll some shit downhill on somebody who richly deserved it, especially today, I didn't see why not._

_Dravis, meanwhile, simply shrugged._

"I'll make sure Mr. Fontaine is contacted immediately. Now, when you mentioned possible reprogramming…"

_He was like a lamprey for all the little stuff that could be harmful or awkward. One-way teeth, nothing that got in got out. I wished we'd gotten our hands on his private toys instead of the CFO's. One fucking crisis point after another. With an internal growl, I threw up a picture of a logic board with all the chips blinking red to blue and back again. Jerome nodded._

"The only really secure way is to physically replace any form of storage or write-accessible logic at a componentry level. As I alluded to before, I coupled the input and output stages of the decryption module and fed it back into the console access, effectively translating it back into normal code with the sabotage flags unset."

_And just when I was so proud of my man, he'd gone and fucked us. I filled every part of that display that wasn't Dravis' window with big red "NO"s but it was too late._

"Sabotage, Material Defender?"

_Fucking lamprey, sitting there with his fingers tented. I SAW that perk of interest. You can't hide muscle twitches from me when I can read a novel before you can finish blinking…_

"And what makes you think this?"

_Jerome paused a moment, heart racing. And I could see his fucking tells too, they weren't exactly well-hidden by makeup and bullshit, so good odds Dravis did too and knew there was going to be more to this than was admitted. DAMMIT. So much for a one-jump decoy. We'd stepped on too many toes, betrayed too much knowledge. Short of a mid-mission abort I couldn't see a way clear of it._

_Still, it was an improvement over this morning, where I projected our life expectancy as perhaps measured in hours. One of the pitfalls of having one's psyche reborn in silicon was the absence of the ability to get blind stinking drunk._

"It's logical, isn't it? We've already traced the corrupted data to a specific update, transmitted through internal channels, and it just _happens_ to flip every fail-safe to a fail-deadly and encrypt itself to a previously unknown scheme? Flags mis-set, perhaps, data corruption perhaps, but this seems deliberate."

_("Distract! Suggest a test!")_

_On the fly thinking, but it was worth a go._

"….From only one data dump of course it's hard to determine. You should consider conducting a test, get a copy of the code running on an air-gapped physically isolated mainframe, give it control over one drone that—if it becomes hostile—will pose a trivial threat."

_Again, Dravis looked down to write another note and nodded thoughtfully._

"An excellent suggestion, Material Defender, if we can reproduce what caused this bug and have a live sample to analyze we may be able to figure out a better way of reprogramming."

_You DO that…just as long as it's not us with a metaphorical truckload of floppy disks out there exposed while the drones close in._

"I take it you are holding off on a recommendation for mine handling until you know what the drone behavior in that environment is."

_Wasn't that what the initial plan had been, about thirty smugs back? Jerome just nodded without speaking, leaving a pause for Samuel to fill. I approved of the small karmic leveling._

"…very well, and the stations?"

_Ugh. Hell, I wanted to hear his ideas for this one. At least we'd moved away from the who, what, how, and why of the sabotage angle._

"I don't know the details of response for station-level security. Regardless, assistance will be required to neutralize external defenses. If I had to do it…"

_And he'd better not have to. Just because the bubble gave us some degree of long-range endurance, I was hardly built for it. _

"Find out the maximum distance the shuttles will engage from, under autonomous control. Send in a decoy target, fire some missiles at the station to engage the point-defenses and have it launch shuttles to deal with the intruder, then begin engaging and eliminating the shuttles. You had mentioned the Pyro-GL in a theoretical context before, those shuttles are trivially enough armed and armored that a wing of GLs ought to be able to mop up a station complement of shuttles without taking many losses…"

_Spare parts for the GLs were also about to get a lot more available, they were maneuverable enough but really shit the bed in terms of firepower on target. Even a swarm of dumb shuttles stood a good chance of swatting the flies out of the sky unless the approach was properly englobing the defenses. But that wasn't my problem._

"…although the reactor shutdown procedure and maintaining air and heat during the logic replacement process may lend itself better to a general evacuation. In either case I don't believe there are lethal defenses inside the external security perimeter."

_Dravis sat back, steepling his fingers across his chest._

"Pacification via gas. With the shuttles eliminated, a squad of internal security ought to be able to either deprogram or exhaust the defenses, regardless of operational status. With our resources reallocated that would leave the facility primed for recommissioning under our control. Very well, Material Defender, you have outlined a sound and practical plan for force disposition to respond to our little….situation….and incidentally eliminated a role for yourself beyond the analysis at the relay. Unfortunately for you, but perhaps fortunately for your contract, I am going to transmit a revised list of facilities for you to personally deal with. These include our weaponry development facilities and specific locations on Pluto and Charon. Consider yourself tasked with not only neutralizing our most dangerous labs—as you put it yourself, you occupy a unique niche, and have unique capabilities—but also with finding and eliminating if possible the source of this threat."

_Fuck, dropped back in the pot again. Once again, I threw up "invasion? Pluto", but this time bigger and sparkling around the edges. He finally asked._

"Why specifically the outermost edge of the solar system? And why did you initially refer to it as an invasion?"

_Dravis outright grinned at that. I could see drying makeup crack around the corner of his mouth, and the way his face wrinkled suggested that it was a foreign expression, it looked like it hurt. It hurt to see, so at least we were even._

"To address the latter first, we also have automated manufacturing and testing facilities. They are programmed with common uses for our drones, things to optimize for, things to optimize against, and to build several, run them through a testing program, then if they pass build more."

_I could do the math on that. It went something like 'automation + fuckup = bigger fuckup' and ended with integrating flipped parameters with automatic iteration from here to Pluto. God, why hadn't this come up before?! The entire time we'd been pissing around in Earth's back yard, there could've been production lines for machines optimized against humans and tested against hostages being running…_

"Furthermore, data from the Erg Gnomic, while mentioning you in an unflatteringly dangerously macho context, confirms energy signatures from drones that do not match any existing parameters, operating further into space than the standard peroxide propellant ought to be able to move them."

_Jerome was seething, and so was I. This was _important_. Now, more than ever, we couldn't brook delays._

"Short of military interdiction, which does not appear to be justified at this time, we have no local forces in the area capable of responding in an appropriate manner, leaving you to investigate and eliminate. As for Pluto…"

_I could see Jerome grinding his teeth. I could practically hear it. Calming, infuriating, droning….why were we still HERE? Why wouldn't this fool just accept help? Shit, maybe if we went to the military…but they wouldn't do shit for one justifiably freaking-out civilian._

"A long-baseline array between Pluto and Neptune has been sporadically reporting motion anomalies in the vicinity of Pluto and Charon. Our investigations have turned up nothing, but the last message from the relay when the scouts were fired on…"

_What last message?! It was like the man lived in a land of completely opposite priorities! I could do it. I could do it right now. Drop the bay door, fire a slug series out into space at a precise angle and intensity. Orbital mechanics would do the rest. Right back to Shiva. Right through that window. Right through his skull, and his worthless brains and blood splattered right over the other end of that transmission._


	24. Into the Frying Pan

Book 3: The Grand Delusion

Chapter 24: Into The Frying Pan

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

- Confucius

If I knew Jenny—and what a silly thing to think—she was engaged in her usual black mutterings. She was hardly alone. The image of putting that trefoil-wearing little illegal payload straight into his office was growing on me, it wouldn't do jackshit to solve the problem at large but it'd be so satisfying. Until the UEG's battleships showed up out of nowhere and wanted certain explanations.

"Our investigations have turned up nothing, but the last message from the relay when the scouts were fired on was partially aimed at Earth but aimed partially out of the ecliptic toward the current orbital position of Pluto and Charon. It was a nonstandard conical modulation with the following degrees…"

Now that was interesting.

_("There's nothing out there…maybe a UEG secret relay…oh lord, you don't think?")_

I hadn't until she raised a very disagreeable thought. If the saboteur had managed to corrupt the UEG military, we were ALL fucked, as nothing civilian could do much good for long.

"Skip the math, will you? Only thing that might be out there between Terra and Charon is the rumored UEG relay, unless you know of something else. Just tell me you didn't sell operations software to the UEG!"

That rattled Dravis' cage for a moment, but he rallied fast, the only sign of his stress the white streak across the back of his hand where he carelessly wiped makeup away in order to banish sweat. The flesh beneath still looked like a clammy fish underbelly.

"….That is a negative, Material Defender, their operational systems are proprietary."

_("Thank the Giant Space Spleen we're not going to be gunning for the __Potemkin__ or __King George__…")_

That was _awfully_ specific coming from her, and I could pause for a moment for a tiny tidbit of humor.

("You'd rather go up against a Zephram-class heavy cruiser?")

("_Nonononooooo….nonoNOnonomaybe. Their phased arrays are pretty crude and take some time to lock on target. I'm willing to bet that with a high-speed firing pass and some brutal maneuvering I could drop both trefoils into their shields and exploit the local weakened spot to drop my own bubble and slip physically in. Then everything we've got at the outboard nacelles and go from there. But it'd be a bad idea, so let's not.")_

Contingency plans for _everything_, I should've known better.

"At least that makes matters simpler. But, dammit, you made this entire thing sound like it was an invasion starting from the Moon, not an outsystem looming issue! If they're even heading this way!"

Dravis gazed back at me impassively, the faintest tic of an intermittent half-smile on his wizened face.

"Really, 1032, would you have accepted the assignment if you knew it was a rogue system patch, nevermind its source or potential consequences?"

Dirty pool.

"Would you have _given_ me the assignment if you knew that?"

Two could try for that kind of cheap shot.

"Speaking candidly I would have preferred that Mr. St. John met with greater success; failing that I would have enjoyed seeing how Captain Garcia would have dealt with the task. He had _crew_. He had parasite craft…"

("_Toadlicking scum!")_

"…and he had greater firepower, heavier armor, and a clear appreciation of a delineated chain of command. You, I find, have needed copious external resources and are blazing a swathe of loose cannon through my organization."

What, did I push his beserk button?

"Sam, you're forgetting idealistic enough to take the job…"

He snorted, but I ignored him.

"…good enough to survive, and smart enough to get you valuable operational data."

"Material Defender, if you were _idealistic_, you would have not negotiated for nine figures and my chair."

Touche.

"….nevertheless, this petty bickering no doubt amuses you but I lack the time to engage in it and so do you. Your clock is counting down, Mr. Corbell, toward irrelevance and a military solution. _Do_ progress with alacrity. Now, if that was all…"

Sideband Jenny shrugged with shoulders and hands, muttering something I was just as glad I couldn't lipread. I thought we'd pretty much dealt with all the outstanding complications new to our life and that bed was calling me back.

"Nothing further. I'll tightbeam you through the relay if feasible, estimated ETA…"

I paused, giving my secretary a chance to do her thing, and read back what she flashed up.

"About fourteen hours."

"Do try and survive, Material Defender, the mercenary hiring treadmill is an exercise I attempt to avoid. Dravis out."

And with that the screen went dark, fading back to a view of the station behind us as we drifted. Hamster was in the cockpit, and I could see her playing solitaire on the navcomp while she waited. I could also see her cheating, but didn't figure it was worth the argument.

_"That puffed-up little prick! Also…what did you just _do_?"_

Jenny stood there before me in her uniform, previous provocation abandoned, head tilted and hands on her hips.

_"I honestly can't figure out if you fucked us or saved us. If we survive any of this, you fucked us so hard we'll have to get out of the solar system entirely. Then again, if we're only doing a select few facilities, our odds go up a little. Want me to get Hamster on the horn?"_

Speaking of disagreeable people and conversations. I nodded, shrugging. We'd catch each other up soon enough. Jenny blipped out, doing….something…and then Hannah's image vanished as well, being replaced by a traditional style of viewscreen on the display wall.

"You done dictating the Great Pan-Germanic Novel there, boss? I was wondering when you'd remember you were in a hurry."

Couldn't help but smile.

"Hamster, you're a vicious little rodent, but at least you're sincere. Thank you for that."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa."

She held up her palms to the screen.

"Just because you got a bureaucratic ass-chewing doesn't mean I'm going to let you get all sappy, sloppy, and sentimental to make up for it. The way you've been stepping on me whenever I get pissed, I think you lost that right about three arguments ago. Where to, and how fast?"

She raised a pretty good point, actually, but I let it go.

"Mercury PTMC relay, if you can stand three internal sustained run us at fifteen. Give me a shadow-side approach from beyond challenge range."

"And how the fuck should I know that?"

You got spoiled by working with people who had information at their fingertips and an unscrupulous desire to acquire more.

"How the fuck should I know it either? It should be public navigational data in a system travel beacon file or something, go hunting. Set it up on autopilot until we're close, get some rest, some food, whatever you need."

"First dibs on a T-bone. I'm starving."

And she cut the connection from her end. The viewscreen blinked out and her image popped back into view in the see-through effect, flipping two middle fingers toward her display before beginning to fiddle with the controls. I felt the change of vector through my feet, watching the stars curvette around me with our changing orientation, and then felt the weight begin to build. Wearily I stripped down the zipper on my sweaty jumpsuit and flung it aside, collapsing face-down on the bed and actually enjoying the pressure on my back as the internal gravities shifted.

_"Right….I think that went rather well."_

I flattened my head to one side, gazing across at her on the nearest wall as she projected herself to be sitting on a similar bed next to what looked like me.

_"By which I mean we're probably still going to die. You did OK, love, for a tactician, but…"_

Lately, always the but.

"Just tell me how badly I screwed this one up."

_"We have decrypt and pretty much found out that it's liable to be sabotage. Right now, you know that, Dravis knows that, Hannah might have been told that. We're expendable, and dangerous, and that nine-figure contract means they're going to find or make an excuse to not pay. If we'd destroyed all their ops, they might have declared bankruptcy, since we've sort of saved them they'll find some way to weasel out on it. You could buy enough firepower to write us off for about seven figures, or buy people to lose some assets for long enough for mid-sixes. Listen to me! There is nothing for you left on Earth, on the Moon, anyfuckingwhere. I can get spares and limited personal effects crated up and shipped via slowboat to wherever you want to go, but we HAVE to get access to some kind of military experimental space-warp drive…or hitch a ride. I'll be with you wherever, whenever, however, you _know _that, but not even Charon is going to be remote enough, please tell me you understand…"_

How could I not, when she sounded that concerned?

"Love, I'm not going to argue. If we can get through this in one piece, you're calling the shots for the next while. You deserve it for me dragging us into this."

_"Hmph. Remember that. Even though I accepted the job for you….hey, hey, don't go to bed just yet. You need something to eat first."_

Sometimes her points got exasperating, especially when all I wanted to do was let two extra of my own body weight press me into the surprisingly yielding bed, but I had to concede that the last food I'd had was a bacon and egg sandwich and caffeinated sludge from this morning.

"Yes dear, I'm doing it, dear. Low carb?"

_"Better be. High fiber plus high G is nobody's friend, and there's only so much the smell of cookies in the pressurized air supply can do to mask the smell of rancid ass in the rest of the cockpit when all the gas gets forced through."_

"Must you be quite so graphic when you're exhorting me to eat?"

I grumbled, dragging myself to my feet with difficulty. Suddenly I regretted shucking out of my jumpsuit quite so quickly, I'd have to either put it back on against gravity or…

Fuckit, Hamster had probably seen a guy in nothing but boxers before, in underwear commercials if nothing else. With a flail in the general direction of the door, Jenny obligingly opened it for me and I stepped through, stopping in the common room for a moment of disoriented confusion. The stars slowly moved past on all sides, the couches floated in the middle of space, and I couldn't figure out where the corridors were for shit.

"Can you at least kill that underfoot? I'm not going to vomit anywhere but I need to get back to the galley…"

_"Spoilsport."_

Nevertheless the floor turned itself off, reverting to opaque white, and I carefully walked back to the door and stepped into the galley. The trick in high gravity was to make every motion small, keep the forces on joints balanced, short strides. The real trick was going to be cooking…I hadn't made much for myself ever since Jenny figured out how to manipulate objects at a distance. She used cooking as a way to please another sense of mine directly and as practice, so I ate well and never had to put that much effort into it beyond buying what she told me on the trips where the groceries weren't automatically delivered.

"So…fancy seeing what happens when bubbles intersect and making me some food?"

_"Not when I'm within a few light-seconds of the intersection, thanks. There's plenty of theories and I don't like any of them. That's my polite way of saying 'get bent and do it yourself'."_

"What's the unpolite way?"

_"Get bent?"_

"Of course."

Rummaging through the storage compartments to either side of the galley yielded a surprising fact. One side held flash-frozen steaks, another was mostly filled with canned foods that didn't even have pictures on their labels. At least there was a marked absence of MREs…which weren't meals, or ready, or edible.

A steak and some canned corn lay on the stovetop some time later—thank the heavens above (and below and around) that either the galley didn't have the displays, or Jenny was taking some small mercies on me and leaving them off—and I had a battered skillet in hand, looking around frustratedly for anything else to actually use.

"They must've disembarked with their luggage."

_"You expected cooking utensils in their luggage? Oils, spices, perhaps some ceramic flatware? No, I think he lifted without a chef or much prep. Just pan-fry it, you do remember how don't you?"_

I remembered pan-frying hamburgers, because I had a pan, and a campfire, and some cheap meat.

"….I remember enough. Is all this shit computer controlled too?"

I didn't get an answer until I caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye and looked up to see Jenny's image, in her conservative swimsuit, floating along the ceiling. Guess that answered that.

"All right, all right, you many-tentacled monster, just figure out how to get this damn thing heated up."

_"You're the one with _hands_, why aren't you fending for yourself?"_

A red light came on underneath an otherwise undifferentiated surface, and I obediently put the skillet down on it and began peeling the shrink wrap from the steak. I was going to eat every little bit of that marbling, regardless how good or bad it might be, because I was about hungry enough—suddenly, now that I had time to think about it—that I was ready to gnaw a bulkhead.

"Because being able to request things of thin air and have them accomplished makes me feel like a xaxtdammed sorcerer?"

_"If you make a joke about a pet Jenny in a bottle, I'll shock you the next time I get the chance. Fair warning."_

The remark had been on the tip of my tongue but I eschewed it. Well, I couldn't blame her for getting a little touchy about it, especially today.

"Or for something else completely unrelated. So while we're on the idea of what to do after…what happens when you do find a way to get properly outsystem? What do you envision as our life on some little dirt-ranching colony around an alien star?"

I spat into the skillet for an impromptu temperature gauge, although I already could half-feel the heat waves beginning to rise. Whatever this little pleasure craft was using, it worked damn well.

_"You may not like being a big fish in a small pond. I don't know. Set yourself up as the local warlord, sell information that's more recent than they started with—hell, the fashions alone would keep you housed and fed for a while. What's your disposition?"_

A good question. I'd been out here on the violent fringes since I was nineteen, and now that I was thinking of myself as closer to forty than thirty—although I still had a year to that midpoint—I wasn't sure I wanted to keep doing it. What did you follow up a job like this with? Petty conflict remediation? Some little surgical strike? There wouldn't be much business out there, short of all-out colony or trade route piracy, and my scruples argued against that. I supposed I could clean out the pirates and bases in short order, but that would put another big target on my head and deprive me of a continuing income stream.

"Benevolent dictator, assuming there's infrastructure to keep you turning and burning."

_"I would've thought benevolent patriarch. Head of a harem. Guess that'll make me your eminence greasy."_

With the flicker of an eye Jenny threw herself on the wall, detuning the resolution of her image and appearing as a a conservatively-ponytailed secretary in a blouse and sensible skirt as I heard the front hatch open.

"Jesus, boss, am I…interrupting something? Heard you talking and saw the galley systems come on. Do you always eat in the mostly-nude?"

What a time for Hamster. And what a time for the pan to get hot, my spittle beginning to boil.

_"Good afternoon, Miss Talbot. I don't believe we've met officially…I'm Jennifer, Mr. Corbell's administrative assistant."_

Hamster squinted past me at Jenny, doing her best to be respectable.

"Like shit you are. The relay's down and we're moving too quick for you to be that remote, even with a piggyback subspace transceiver in the fighter. Fess up."

I arched an eyebrow, shaking my head and going back to watching the spit as it finally evaporated. Between the skillet and Jenny versus Hannah, I knew which would produce more heat and which would be more dangerous…so I threw in the steak and focused on the safe one. Jenny paused a moment before replying, neutral-toned. It was kind of unusual to hear.

_"I will be happy to relay all questions or concerns to Mr. Corbell as soon as he becomes available. I don't have a comm address for you, so if you'll let me have that and your message, I'll make sure he gets it."_

Unseen…well, probably…I grinned.

"So you're chatting with your AI broad in the mostly-nude, while denying my first dibs on steak. Really, 'Material Defender', this is shockingly inconsiderate. Board-level rude rubbing off on you?"

Good thing I wasn't drinking anything or I would've choked on it trying not to laugh. Hannah pushed by me brusquely, rummaging in the galley's storage areas and coming out with a plastic-wrapped steak and a few cans stuffed into her uniform pockets.

"Fine, then at least second dibs on the pan, now that it's properly hot. Are you cooking that dry?"

It was like being stuck in a coat closet with a swarm of ferrets.

"Can't find any oil, or any spices. And I don't need to be in my jumpsuit to update mission parameters."

"Now how did I know you were a bachelor? Bet you bought her a bunch of smutty subroutines or at least she's got some kind of skimpy outfit mode. No woman around you or you'd be more civilized."

_"I have sitatuationally appropriate behavior and clothing."_

Jenny commented demurely to Hannah's back, as she bent over to sniff the sear forming on the steak.

_"As for civilizing Mr. Corbell, my primary function encompasses secretarial duties, not divine intervention."_

Our resident loose cannon spun around so fast she nearly knocked me on my ass when she hit me in passing. I flung out a hand to the countertop away from the heated surface and caught my balance as quickly as I could, despite the pang of pain in my elbow from the extension under acceleration…any little fall in high gravity could be dangerous indeed and it'd be such a STUPID way to get hurt.

"Well aren't you a pert little polygon. You must be the one who's balls-deep in the computers on this thing."

_"I'm sorry, Mr. Corbell is still not available, please feel free to leave.."_

The _tiniest_ pause. I caught it. Hannah caught it and narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

_"…your questions or concerns with me and I will ensure he sees them."_

"Bullllllllllllshit. Mister Corbell, you've got something weird going on here. Are you accessing this thing through your thing?"

….It was an image that was mercifully out as quickly as it had come. What with one thing and another I'd spent all day juggling hand grenades, and this one was at least relatively small.

"Seems like a shame not to use all the ELINT gear for making my life a little bit easier."

"No shit? I mostly flew cover for the electronic intelligence airframes and spaceframes before I got short, got out, and got into PTMC. Tried to keep pretty current. What're you running?"

And that was twice in the fucking day people wanted hardware specs. Three times if you counted Shiva, several more with Quentin. I didn't dare subvocalize, she was short enough to see my throat move. Instead, I just turned back to the pan and did my best to flip the steak with dull half-claws, sucking on slightly scalded fingertips afterward. Jenny stepped in, probably picking upon my discomfort, but she really wasn't helping.

_"Mostly Mr. Corbell runs his mouth. When he is available. Which I regret that he is still not."_

Even if it was true, all three parts.

"Whoo, your broad gets bitey…what, is it because I haven't left a message?"

_"You can leave your message for him and he or I will contact you at some other time."_

"Hey! Here's my message, shut the fuck up if you're going to keep lying!"

Hannah turned back to me, slapping her steak down on the countertop next to the hot skillet. It was starting to smell really good by now, and almost done. She poked me dead-center in the chest with a trimmed-short finger and glared up.

"Look, I'm not asking for your secrets, right, but I've read your little PTMC file."

There was already a file?

"And while I'm sure she's your designated filtering device slash hands-free hussy, either there's more to it or you like to disguise your voice as a woman for the occasional comm chatter, don't think I forgot that."

Well, I'd forgotten it. Everybody thought they were a fucking expert.

"AND I heard you and Dravis go nine innings and overtime."

Another steak check, to cover an half-outraged inquiry.

("You didn't lock that out?!")

_("We need all the friends we can get.")_


	25. Wing-tipped Spats

Chapter 25: Wing-tipped Spats

"I'd laugh at all your jokes, you'd listen to my suggestions.

One mind, one soul, one common destination.

Now we can't help but fight over the directions." – Norman Cook

_I didn't need this. I didn't need her. I didn't need the interference. I didn't need to be pulling his bacon out of the fire. I knew the job was dangerous when I took it—in the specific sense with PTMC and the general sense with my heart—but generally the boy stopped at routine bacon burnage and not rolling the entire pig into a fucking volcano like some kind of sacrifice to Murphy. Under the circumstances, I was having a hard time being the perfect little buttoned-down base-two bimbo. What else could I do? We might need an advocate. Or a witness. Or just somebody far enough inside who remembered that he was good people and could be leaned on if needed. There was so much to say, so little to say it in, and because I hadn't been paying attention to Hamster's movements—surprise surprise, even I wasn't perfect, even I let my attention wander, I was stuck in this conversation._

_Damn her. I couldn't decide if I wanted her on our side or in a straitjacket anyway. I was allowed to have moods, too, right? The resident deusette ex machine was frustrated, angry, and with a complete lack of acceptable targets._

_"I'm sorry, Ms. Talbot, but I have another engagement. Thank you for stopping by today."_

_I made the fake figure appear a fake door, turn around and walk through it, close it behind her, and then evaporated the door. Let Jerome stop juggling meat and deal with the damn proximity mine on two feet there._

_He pulled the pan off the heat, searched frustratedly for a moment to find somewhere to put it down, and settled for a nearby spot of countertop. I turned off the stove…let Hamster fend for herself._

"Now if I could only find a plate. Or silverware. Or something to cook veggies on."

_Hannah gave him a funny look._

"You don't care that I listened in?"

_Jerome shrugged dismissively._

"I'm not going to be the magical influence that sets you on a path to righteousness, morality, clean living, and operational security, and you'd probably get more out of the argument than I would, and it's quicker than trying to figure out what to tell you myself."

_Right answer, for some of the right reasons. I was just surprised he had the breath for a little speech like that under the gravities involved. _

"That's either very smart or very stupid. Does Mr. Dravis always look that…plastic?"

"He was halfway between drunk and drugged and in shock this morning. It's actually an improvement. Scary as that is. How'd Angie take to you coming along?"

_Confusion to the enemy! He was adapting to her communication style now, bouncing from topic to topic as he tilted the pan and let the steak slip onto the countertop. Hannah glared, grabbed the pan, slammed her steak in it with unnecessary force, and slammed the pan down on the countertop with enough of an impact to bend a handle rivet._

"What do _you_ think?!"

_It took her about fifteen seconds to find the cooktop controls, and I thought Jerome had hit a magnificent sore spot._

"And have you even considered the time factor?"

_Oh goddammit, she was going to bring it up. I was going to wait until we were near Venus but nooo. This life would be so much easier if I could get laid, get drunk, or at least pound my fist into a wall without either knocking down the wall or vaporizing a significant hole through a significant distance of whatever was behind it. Making a planned trip to the asteroid belt for stress relief via cannons and missiles and an innocent hunk of rock just wasn't as satisfying. It wasn't until a moment later that it hit me—for RECREATION, this dead alien stuck in a mining ship wanted to go mining, with the cooperation of a miner's kid. Get me off this fucking treadmill of history._

"Which time factor?"

_Jerome said tiredly. I could see him testing the steak's heat with a fingertip every so often, letting it properly cool a bit to season. I also knew him well enough to put money on him having a burned mouth in a couple of minutes._

"The military-blows-everything-up one that Dravis keeps shoving down my throat, the general nature of interplanetary distances, whether I'm stuck with you until Charon? Take your pick, I'd say they'd been keeping me awake if I'd had the chance to sleep."

_Well, beyond that little nap between Earth and lunar orbit. Here it went, here went another log onto the fire of our stress._

"You may not even NEED me. Human beings need food. Also water. Three to five days without. Poof."

_She wasn't used to the gravities. The combination of her anger and exertion and speaking was making her cardiovascular system struggle to keep up, but Jerome put it together and squinched his eyes shut in pain._

_("That's assuming that the drones keep them alive.")_

_I believed in ripping off bandages._

("How many?")

_Simple questions, hard answers. The facilities didn't really list a live-in crew manifest, just recommendations._

_("Maybe a hundred.")_

_What I _didn't_ add was "and that's a sneeze in the ocean today", because there were some things that his strong empathetic streak wouldn't handle well. Not because it affected me directly…but because this was the second-worst hurt I'd ever seen him, nevermind that he was functioning. I'd done what I could to assuage the first—after all, here I was!—and was working on the second, but._

"Here."

_Jerome pushed his done steak at Hamster in frustration._

"You can't handle the gravs. Get in the water bath, eat something, I'll voice-only comm you if something comes up. This affects planning."

_Hannah half-tried to throw up her hands but gave up the idea of expressive body language and just took the meat._

"No secretary peeking?"

_He just turned his back on her._

"Even if you were my type or I was interested, there's no time to fuck around."

_So to speak. With a glower and a mutter she left, heading for the common area as Jerome flipped the steak over. This time I watched her even when she'd gone into the other bedroom and until she flipped the privacy switch on the bathroom. It made it opaque to me and I stopped listening or looking…although it wouldn't stop me if I wanted to see in, not with the kind of tentacles I had into this thing._

"Is she gone? How long to Venus from Mercury?"

_"She's gone. And running like this, over a day. Picked a shitty time, we'll have to do a solar transit. Up and over. Venus will be a…small problem."_

_A day for honesty. Jerome flinched while flipping the steak and almost dropped it. It just hurt to see him like this, but if I held off the bad news that he needed to know, he had much less time to react to it. Besides, I couldn't do this alone._

"Dear god, another one?! What now!"

_"I'll tell you when you have steak in your mouth and you're in the bath, unless you prefer the bed."_

"I'll stick with the bed. I spend enough time sitting down in bolsters. This time I'll let the weight push my ass down on me instead of the other way around."

_Came his sour reply, his face wrinkling._

"Anything else?"

_"There's plenty else. I'd like us to have a conversation with some degree of contentment and peace and our personal lives, not all this….this. If you mean any more problems, not yet."_

_His sigh was like a great wave washing away sand castles on the beach._

"Then let's make this brief. It's obvious Dravis considers any remaining people a liability and expendable. Do we? Can we? Should we?"

_Oh, he wasn't going to like the answer to that._

_"Most of the PTMC facilities on that list are mines. As you well know. Slowing down and taking this in a fashion safe for humans exposes us to greater danger, slows us down, and makes us drag along Hamster. If it were just us, how fast would you be running?"_

"Five. I see what you mean. We have confirmation of containment failures out there."

_"Follow it through, darling. Please."_

_He had to come to this one for himself. Although it was obvious to me. You couldn't call me a sociopath, it wasn't even my _species_ except by marriage._

"That's your shorthand of 'the decision sucks, you need to make it'. Fine. If we can handle the relay quickly, we'll hit Venus in a day and a half or so. If the drones haven't fired on flesh, any crew will already be almost dead. There's a nickel-iron mine and an atmospheric lab…."

_Waiting sucked but he couldn't be prodded without losing track and devaluing the conclusion._

"…and the biggest task of that lab would be to keep it out. Shit."

_"Close but no cigar. There'll be nobody to rescue, but."_

_I could see it. Update received, applied, suddenly the facility's priority becomes letting the toxic, corrosive, high-pressure Venusian atmosphere IN under all but the most controlled conditions._ _That wasn't a facility that PTMC would be reclaiming any time soon. _

"….but the drones aren't rated in Venusian atmosphere, are they?"

_"Ninety atmospheres, sulfuric acid clouds, winds of hundreds of miles an hour, about a thousand degrees. If they even had drones."_

_Jerome flipped the steak out of the pan and examined it critically, moving the pan back over to the other countertop where it sizzled in the juice flecks that his first attempt had left. I turned off the surface and wished he'd gotten the first one—as he put the second one down on another spot—as Hamster'd probably made a mess of that one._

"Let me guess. You're not rated for it either."

_"Or the __Ball__, or the __Carrot__. As for the mine, the nearest transfer shuttle to go in via maintenance airlock would be where?"_

_Jerome paused with his mouth open, then shut it again and shook his head._

"Fuck that for the next couple minutes."

_I kept my trap shut as he put the pan back where it'd come from and carried the steak back to the bedroom. His mutterings I let him keep to himself out of respect and it wasn't until he'd peeled out of his underclothing—flung across the room—and collapsed on the bed eating the steak with hands and teeth, the way nature intended, that I picked up the thread._

_"Nearest Venus-rated shuttle for MN0101 would be at McQuarrie…"_

"…the processing station…"

_"Which will be infested as hell._

"Refresh my fucking memory."

_He paused to wipe away the steak juice on his lips into his arm hair. At least he was curled up on one corner of the bed so the inevitable drippings wouldn't be what he had to sleep in. Hygiene got a little relative sometimes._

"What's it take to Venus-rate a shuttle?"

_"Fancy ceramic armor and a lot of it, also a focus on structural integrity revamping from the standard model. Tough like me."_

_Jerome winced, and I couldn't blame him. Tearing off another hunk of meat with pointy canines he made a shooting gesture and cocked his head in question, so I did a little digging through that huge PTMC database I still hadn't had the chance to skim more than the fringes from._

_"Nothing much. Gas-pumped lasers, all solid-state optics for no moving parts and no exposure risks. Engagement strategy suggested is to chew holes in the armor so the atmosphere can get in and finish the job or exploit localized heating to disrupt airflow if possible."_

"And how many of THOSE are we looking at?"

_"McQuarrie's old. Getting nickel-iron from the asteroids is still more cost effective than trying to fight Venus uphill both ways for it. It was a Pan-Germanic station originally before PTMC bought it, so not too many. I mean why would you want to dick around on Venus anyway? Maybe five or ten shuttles."_

_Only five or ten. That were armored against a significant fraction of the kinetic energy we could bring to bear, smooth-surfaced for easy flight envelopes, and refractory enough to withstand most of the photons we could spew their way. Still, at least they'd be engaging from space…and I was pretty agile out in hard vacuum. The shielding bubble would work properly there. _

"And the combined impact of that many lasers on your armor?"

_There was the rub._

_"Significant surface damage, some extended to middle layers. Convergent fire, prolonged, would go right through after a few seconds delay."_

_Depending on where and how they hit. I wasn't going to let them get that much time-on-target._

_"But you've got to consider PTMC automated fire control can't be as good as mine, and there's no way wallowing barges like that can keep me in their sights. I ought to be able to spike those lasers with borehole shots, if I can't do it with missiles or our Vulcan."_

_Jerome looked up from his bloody meal, face primitive with the look of a fresh kill._

"And while you're shooting down their barrels, they're shooting down ours."

_"Please!"_

_I was genuinely indignant._

_"Gas-pumped lasers aren't shit against something running off the reactor more or less directly. Besides, I'd be on the harmonizing so it'd probably not be a zero-deflection shot."_

"And you're going to just…handle a dogfight with five to ten of these things?"

_"It'll be rough on missiles, but unless you want to leave Venus completely untouched and move on. Or ask Dravis to send in the cavalry for an experimental recovery while we're on station to assist."_

"If we can save the relay…"

_A pause for a belch that I rated around a six._

"I'll ask."

_"But you keep getting distracted. You're almost through this chain, I promise."_

"Distracted, hell."

Although he took a moment to lick his fingertips , hunching unconsciously closer over his meal. The stress was bringing out our bad sides.

"It boils down to long odds that anybody on Venus is still alive, and you can't check, and the shuttles that are suitable to run down are the ones we'll have to shoot down or otherwise neutralize. Let's deal with the problem of survivors."

_"What problem?"_

_Wearily, I projected myself on the wall, another mirror image of the room, leaning on the mirror-bedpost closest to his mirror image and resting a hand on his mirrored shoulder. With a sigh he paused to reach up and pat his actual shoulder. Putting his hand over mine would have been sweet…if I'd had hands to put there to begin with._

_"I can't dance around it much longer. It boils down to 'what survivors?' I honestly believe we should abandon that strategic facet of this project. The window is effectively gone…and it's down to us against the clock. Hannah may be great for keeping you annoyed and on your toes but we could be burning sixty-six percent faster without her."_

_I saw him half crumple into himself, desultorily nibbling at the remaining steak as if it had lost most of its appeal._

"And if it came down to it, I could get the tubes from the survival kit, stick them into the oxy supply and up my nose, and have you pulse the bolsters to forcibly compress my chest if we have to go eyeballs-in at more."

_And it would leave him a drooling wreck for longer than we could spare at the endpoint, but it was possible._

_"Beside the point, mister pancake-urge. Do you want to chase skeletons and make more with the lost time?"_

_I was losing my grip on small talk was what was happening. Call it being frank, but all kinds of control were starting to erode. Jerome glanced up, meeting my illusionary gaze squarely, and nodded._

"Comes down to triage, doesn't it? We'll leave Hannah with the relay. I want to see if you can talk to an infected station like you could the mine. You'll park the Carrot out of range and we'll go in hot for a recon run. We still need to observe a mine, what's after Venus?"

_I knew how much it took to cram down everything else and make decisions in moments like this. I knew how much he'd been doing it already, and I had a better idea of his capacity than he did. And this was capacity I doubted the long-term integrity of. Poor bastard would have nightmares for months, if not years, over the people he wasn't going to be able to save, and never remember—when asleep—the people saved. Consciences were a pain in the ass and made me glad I didn't have much in that line. A quick riffle through my database again and I swore audibly._

_"It's Mars, and it sucks. There's a military base, the Utopia Planetia fleet yards—they're not PTMC facilities, thank Ghu—and a sulfur mine on Io. And Eta Sigma in orbit's going to be a bitch to clear, there's a directive….CMD ag222 530, whatever that means. Looks like PTMC was working with Utopia for some drone construction, plasma cannons and all that implies."_

_He half sat up, raising an arm abortively as if to hurl the last bit of his meal from him, but reconsidered and furiously chewed, eyes blazing, until he swallowed in haste and could reply after a moment's thought._

"Please tell me you strategically recommend just destroying the base! From outside!"

_"With fucking what, our good looks?"_

_I couldn't even think of how I'd do that. A guided missile, set to emit like a whole BUNCH of loose humans, shot through the corridors and making circles around the reactor until it vented itself in stupidity? But that'd have the entire base on alert, and they'd come roiling out like rats from a sinking ship….or we could stand off and try to Mega it out, but megatonnage only went so far and that was a pretty blatant contract violation…_

"With that military access code? You got me in once, you can do it again if the bases haven't been talking, right?"

_No way in hell was I letting him waltz into an entire base! …Even if that was an angle I hadn't thought of, because I was thinking the direct approaches and losing my _touch_ dammit._

_"And then what?"_

"See if it shuts down, I guess. With an encoded command sent from that command level…after all, everything still worked, it was just put in a different mode. "

_Why didn't I think of that? Because I was used to regarding these as fantastically complex systems, smart and deep like me at best and nested to hell-and-gone at worst?_

_"Would a secondary controller respect that?"_

"Doesn't a shutdown command automatically recall all drones to the charging point, to wait for central control to reestablished?"

_Now how in the world…I hauled up the database for the third time in as many minutes, pinned it into ready reference memory so it hung beside me, and began flipping mental pages. He should be right, assuming standard software, but…_

_"Yes. How did you _know_ that?"_

_I thought he'd be happier to reveal his sources and take a little pride. Instead he just looked down at the covers and gently pulled them back._

"Overheard a lot of Humans First plans when I was burning them out after they got you."

_On the bright side, now that he was lying down with his eyes closed, shop talk was probably over. A little judicious interference with the climate controls and I heated the opposite side of the bed up and focused the speakers to project my voice as if it was coming from a point source behind his head as he faced away from my wall—trusting I had his back. As always._

_"We'll deal with dumping Hamster on the relay and Dravis's goon squads at McQuarrie, and the whole Mars mess soon enough. You need your rest."_

_And dimmed the ambient star brightness for good measure. It amused me that—in order to get the requisite Gs in the proper direction, the __Carrot__ was actually streaking across the spacelanes with her 'roof' acting as a prow, smug atmospheric symmetry aside. At least I only had to fly _backwards_ for max eyeballs-in tolerances…_

"_Do you believe in the afterlife? In Somebody up or down or wherever, in the mythical 'there'?"_

_Jerome snorted softly, a faint smile curling up his lip corner, as he burrowed deeply into the covers and clutched a few spare pillows to himself to snuggle._

"Defer to you on the afterlife. Also on the someones out there….as you've demonstrated and revealed."

_"Not what I meant and you know it. Do you believe in the concept of Fate or more appropriately, a sort of Personal Deity"?_

"I believe your idea of bedroom talk is, as ever, way too weighty."

_"No, I mean…we're planning because we'll only stop doing that when we're dead. But we're, on some level, pretty much planning on our eventual death during this. Whether it's literal or figuratively, having to abandon our lives here."_

_And I didn't even know why I was asking. I'd brushed the afterlife once already, and the part of me I was used to existing in was already quite unmistakeably dead. _

"…I guess it never really mattered to me. Sounds strange, doesn't it? If there's a Somebody and a Something, then as long as we're together it's the good place. If we're apart, it's the bad place, but that's OK because it'll give both of us energy and motivation to change whatever has to change….and if this is all there is, it's been a pretty good twenty years with you. I don't know if I'd change anything, even…that."

_He yawned widely and put his hand over his face, curling further into the wasn't until I felt the temperature gauges creeping up that I had to consciously throttle back the reactor excursion that had been the result of blushing that deeply._

_"You're an incurable romantic, darling. The prognosis is terminal sappiness. I just hope we wind up in the same place."_

"Now who's the sappy one? We'll wind up with our atoms intermingled, at least."


	26. Sol-y Diver

Chapter 26: Sol-y Diver

"Open my eyes when the day has died, I turned the world and I slept, all right.

Now my day-mare's over, I zip my jeans tight. Oh Lord, won't you bless this night?"

-Disneyland After Dark

Everything ached, but I smiled a little to hear the faint note of frustration in her voice. She always got so melodramatic—while accusing me of the same thing—and it was still sort of a guilty pleasure to take some of the wind out of her sails when she was really starting to wind up.

_"You know what I meant!"_

"Usually. I think we've got to let this go."

That wasn't quite the right way to put it, despite the wild longing that rose in me to bail on the entire mission. I used my sense of duty to squelch it again, fortunately quickly.

"I mean…we're over our heads. Strung out. We already needed that vacation and this hasn't helped."

A sniff answered me.

_"You think?"_

"I mean the initial plan was simple. Go in, get people out, blow it all up. But along the way it's all gone horribly out of band. The people are going to be dead, and we're not going to be blowing much of it up."

It was warm under here. Safe. I could bury my face in the pillow—still smelling faintly of the perfume of, well, I didn't _know_ it was the CFO's wife or daughter, it could be him or his son or husband or whatever he had, but it smelled nice, smelled like the luxuries I hadn't had the time or funds for for a very long time. If I didn't look, I was going to believe I was ending the day like it'd started—her behind me, a long stressful time passed.

_"Dammit, I thought we weren't going to talk shop. We could still blow it up, you know."_

I shifted, curling my toes against the covers to move blood back toward my head a bit. The entire conversation was starting to slide into mental twilight.

"If there was a button, I might hit it, but. You were talking about triage. What helps the invader more, selective destruction and otherwise neutralization? Or sending it all up in energetic particles? If my blue-haired alien space babe really thinks it's better to pound ground through every facility…still pissed off like you were this morning? Bristly and all?"

The idea of her being mad enough to scare me seemed remote, implausible, distant. Like seeing a unicorn through a rain-streaked window, plausible, but far enough removed from accuracy to make you doubt yourself.

_"Oh hell. There's been so much water under the bridge since then."_

The bed warmth was a nice touch. I knew better, steeled myself against rolling back into emptiness, but just concentrated on memories of her…hard muscle under soft skin, simultaneously relaxed and poised like a wild rabbit. Flattened up against my naked back, two points just below my shoulderblades and warm breath ruffling the back of my neck, a hand low across my stomach when it was actually sleep she wanted... She sounded tired too, beat down like me.

_"So much to be upset about. But at this point it's about as useful as getting mad at an assembly line for welding a seam wrong ten thousand times in a row. I'm not even mad at my former kind. Jerome, I'm just scared for us."_

It was unexpected enough that I stopped trying to position my own right hand in the equivalent position—it wasn't the same but it was better than nothing—and almost opened my eyes.

_"We've got so little real data and we're doing the job of an entire battle group in planning and execution. I've no idea who could be behind this, what else they might have up their sleeves, and although we can probably do well enough against just drones—although it'll be a worthy fight if they get coordinated or more capable—now we've got at least two massive enemies that I can't figure out how to fight and we're both so close to the bone. These runs won't help either. And despite it all, I'm scared that because I hid the whole alien thing from you for so long, you'll let stress and worry gnaw at you and start a wedge. Still. Even though I probably know better."_

It didn't surprise me that she was still on that. I'd warned her about over-thinking on many previous instances but it never seemed to take.

"If I didn't trust your _judgement_ neither one of us would be here. You've always made it clear that facts were…."

I heard her nervously breathing behind me. The speaker array was marvelously effective, all right.

"…well, negotiable. Need to know. Operational security. Except for a stroke of really bad luck, your big secret would've been yours still."

_"I've been trying to work up the nerve to tell you for years…"_

Couldn't help but laugh at that, fighting the impulse to roll my head backward and pull her in for a kiss. I didn't want to open my eyes and deal with her not being there, not when she sounded so vulnerable.

"Now who's going soft? Plain and simple I didn't need to know. It's been rough enough on you already."

_"Mmhmm…you know, if I'd lived, things would probably have turned out far worse. I probably would've just woken up some day as a ruthless alien saboteur and walked straight out of your life forever, everything that I'd learned and felt only relevant as background information. Probably would have even slept reasonably well. That's what haunts me. I made a choice that day, when I saw who I was for the first time in my memory, after it was too late to change the events that had already killed me….I could've let myself go the rest of the way. I could have broadcast my full self, or I suppose my 'natural' self only, into the ship and continued my mission out of rage. But…"_

A tear ran down my cheek as I listened, holding the pillow tighter to me and desperately wishing for it to be her.

_"…but I knew who I'd been, and knew what I wanted, and knew what made me happy, and knowing that I'd left you like that…"_

Screaming my throat raw, palms against the inside of the canopy, green pinwheeling away from her wounds, that look of dawning horror and regret on her face…

_"….I didn't waste my one action with anything stupid like mouthing 'I love you'. I love you and you better damn well know it. Sometimes I wonder if it's all just a silly teenager's idiocy, that I've somehow programmatically constrained myself in here to the point where I can't NOT love you."_

I wouldn't pretend that didn't sting.

"It's not like we haven't had our share of large arguments."

_"Shut up. I'm trying to dump all this before I crack. Point is, I'm more or less happy this way, a lot happier than I would've been as a saboteur and doing my job and leaving you scarred and ruined for it. We have had a good run, and it's not over yet. Keep us in one piece and I'll keep beating my head into a brick wall of how to get out of this entire thing alive. I love you, I'm glad I made the choices I did. No but, no flippancy, just that. We may not have anything else to speak of—especially lately—but we've still got each other. And it's proven to be long-term effective."_

"How is it you can make even simple things complicated, beloved?"

I mumbled, three-quarters asleep, one-third serious. With luck I'd be too tired and uncomfortable to have much in the way of nightmares.

"Hope you'll take a short, sincere answer."

And despite my throat being in no means anatomically designed to do it any degree of justice, I made the closest thing to a purring noise that I could manage. Strangely, it seemed to have a certain relaxing effect on me as well and before I knew it I was out.

…

_"…UP, DAMMIT! WAKE UP! IT'S ALL RIGHT, LOVE!" _

Something intangible hit me like a punch straight to my brain, like walking into a 60 mph wind gust, and I snapped awake mid-scream knowing that Jenny needed me. Don't ask me how. My head hurt, my throat burned, my back ached, and I was halfway off the bed, fingers already stinging from what was evidently a bid to dig my way out through the floor.

"Fuck! Ow"

I croaked, trying to crawl the rest of the way down before I did myself serious injury…until I realized that I was under normal weight and it was dropping steadily all the time. I could wait. A hand to my throat and I kept it quiet for now.

"What?! What's going on?"

I remembered something about skeletons, lining walls and ceiling and floor…and a gigantic swing-arm drone that had me by the feet, pulling me in…It'd been chewing Jenny, hence my screaming.

_"You were about one holler away from me getting Hamster in here, crash priority, for hands-on intervention. _Talk_ to me darling, are you all right? I couldn't wake you up, kept having to yell, and then I did something that...ask me later."_

That did plenty to wake me up too. A light shove on the floor and I began to pivot back upwards, my zero-gee reflexes coming back to me. Oh. My feet were tangled in the blanket.. That explained the claw.

("Throat hurts. Lousy dream, gigantic swingarm drone that was laughing and eating you and pulling me in. What'd you do? Where are we? I'm sorry, I must've really been out…")

I didn't feel out. I felt reasonably refreshed if you ignored the adrenaline grounding itself through every nerve, and the clamminess of cooling sweat and the general feeling of having been rolled out like bread dough. The room changed appearance suddenly to a remarkably accurate panorama of our crates at home, except with the roof gone and the sun shining in. The simulated outside looked nice, even to the point of being free of air traffic and with a warm breeze blowing. I could feel the lights helping me warm up. Jenny popped into view in her old two-piece swimsuit, leaning on the bedroom wall and tipping her hat down to throw an shadow across her eyes.

_"We're in shade-side approach to the relay, it's between us and Mercury like I was afraid it was going to be. But we're out of range and staying that way until I hear otherwise. Eh. It's more alien space babe stuff. I may be able to talk to you without the transceiver."_

I was still a little fuzzy, and grabbed the canopy so I could shake my feet free of the sheets without giving myself some devilish vector across the room, sparing my other hand to squeeze my temples in a futile attempt to press out the ache.

"(What, like with speakers? I know that already. Will the relay defenses back off if we retreat out of range? Can you evade them for long enough to get out of range?")

If she hadn't been blasting the heat, the wind would've been freezing my balls off. As it was, I didn't smell too pleasant…the stench of fear and stress…but at least I could enjoy it instead of freezing my meat-and-two-veg off. Jenny reached down and scooped a pillow off the floor and hurled it at me—it winked out when it reached the wall, but a puff of air reached me a moment later and I grinned. The system had potential, especially if it could be combined with Jenny's existing abilities. Or I could just wear a helmet all the time for a closer-range display.

_"Idiot! No. Sort of. Still directly into your head. But without the transceiver. Uh. Do you think PTMC standard programming would back off or go for the kill?"_

That one was easy, at least. I pushed off from the canopy in the direction of my underwear.

("Think about liability issues! But would have our dastardly space villain tied that settings to the tracks as well? And are you talking about….what, telepathy?")

Jenny could be seen twirling a phantom handlebar mustache as I landed, an imitation six-shooter hung low on her narrow hip. The leather did clash with the blue bikini bottom. So did the clamminess of chilly briefs on my balls, taking a lot of the impact of seeing her like that right away.

_"Even assuming they didn't. It's a fixed station with significant importance, it's liable to be hard-hitting. Line of sight weapons…lasers, probably coilguns or railguns. Mercury missiles. …Of course they probably had to have _those_, considering. Don't grunt like that, just adjust yourself correctly the first time. Hell if I know, I can't read your mind but I think I can sort of project through the electronic warfare bits. I think I've done it by mistake a few times."_

("Gonna burn out my brain before I'm even dressed again, eh? What do we know about the challenge-response? PTMC scouts got the challenge, or at least within range to give it. Let's keep the Carrot out of range, and put Ballso the relay has to shoot through our escort to get to Hamster.")

_"Sure you wouldn't prefer it the other way around?"_

("You're thinking too small.")

I commented, kicking off in a fast arc to where I'd put the rest of my clothes. It'd been a while since I was in zero-G, and while my reflexes worked fine, my trajectory estimates were off and I had to do a triple-corner-carom from the edge of the bedroom back down, trying to ignore Jenny pointing and laughing as I snatched jumpsuit on the way past and a handful of the canopy to stop me so I could try to get it on.

("What I'd do is wind her up and turn her loose in the administrative wing of Shiva. I mean, it's plausible, she's the one who got debriefed, she was right there with us, she has up-to-date intel on the lunar station, she ran evac and observed drone behavior, even got a bunch of kills with the mines…")

_"And she'd have the impact of a well-dispersed fuel-air explosive."_

("Won't say that's not a factor.")

I felt better after the rest, by the stars it'd helped. Objectively speaking I was in worse shape than this morning, and it still itched unpleasantly to subvocalize, but I was still going to do it.

("At any rate, we'll go in, give credentials a try—appropriately translated—and see what happens. If there's a problem, maximum save-me-for-later acceleration out of the challenge range and hope they stop shooting.")

And if the underwear was bad…I pulled the jumpsuit up, zipped it, and felt like I'd mistakenly put on something I hadn't bothered to dry after washing. Now the goosebumps came out as I rubbed my hands over my torso to try and at least bring all the old sweat up to my body temperature again.

(_"Thought you were talking about taking out the ordinance from long range before.")_

("Before you told me how much it was, yes. I thought a couple lousy emitters, a couple homing missiles.")

_("Well, if we're finished acrimoniously dismantling another perfect good plan, how about the head thing. You've been suspiciously quiet about it.")_

I'd been _dressing._

("….Not five minutes ago you were shouting at me for being too loud! I just can't win!")

Oh, it was worth it to see her nonplussed look, and finally a rueful smile, shaking her head.

_"All right, all right, TELL me if this hurts. In fact, just tell me what's going on."_

I closed my eyes to better concentrate.

"I…nothing, nothing, lots of nothing, are you sure you've got it plugged…"

_*…is a carrot. Herbivore food. Sometimes infested with hamster pilots….*_

It felt like my thoughts were tuning into a radio that was frequency-hopping as the words slid through. I felt them, somehow, but not via perception, they were just…there. But unmistakeably with her sound, or feel, or….something I couldn't put my grey matter finger on, and I said as much.

_*...expect for a beta….so used to THERE you are. Well that's different.*_

("In the 'that's interesting' sense? My turn, what the hell are you doing inside my head?")

_*Taking a shit directly in your frontal lobes, what do you think? The signal theory on this is off the fucking map.*_

Her image on the wall put both index fingers to her forehead and leaned forward, eyes bugging out in a caricaturist display of a mentalist, and I had to laugh. Inside my head she sounded much like she sounded inside my ear…inside my head the normal way I guessed…except she had more of a presence. Like she was there in person, instead of just via a little speaker. It was something I could feel instead of explain, but it felt good. An audiophile could probably do the description justice. Nevertheless I didn't _think_ my little brain cells were frying….Of course, since the brain didn't have any pain nerves of its own, it wasn't like I'd know.

("Doctor, will I be able to play the piano again?")

_*No, because you sure couldn't before. How's the quantity?*_

("Actually pretty good. More natural.")

_*Which is funny as shit because this is from me thinking, so whatever output that actually goes to, through the ECM suite, into and out of the bubble master hardwired logic, into one of the general EM emitters. I could diagram it out but I don't understand the math. That subspace heterodyning crap to avoid transmission lag just makes my head hurt.*_

("Just hearing about it is doing the same. Figuratively! This is nice. Can you receive?")

I tried as hard as I could to think about a carrot, but she stuck her fingers in her ears and hummed pointless melodies at me via the room's speakers.

_*You want to do WHAT? You'd never get that many bobcats to…oh, wait, I'm transmit-only. Still. You don't have the knack and I can't pick that shit up. I mean it's probably THERE but. That and this is using about half a watt of transmitter power. There is…plenty…in reserve.*_

It suggested some interesting ideas.

("No melting my earwax from inside. This is worth playing with…are you selective? Yes, Hannah would already have been in here. Hey, we could make her go nuts.")

And I hoped the bedroom was more or less soundproof, belatedly.

_*Small thinker. If I can figure out how to talk to other people, I could tune into Dravis. From Shiva's hangars. And have an accidental full-power transmitter excursion. And hope it resulted in strawberry jam."_

It was hard to get this damn thing on in zero gee, but I finally zipped it up, started myself rotating by flinging out an arm, and pushed off the bedpost for my boots when I touched it.

("And how would that help? You've cordially disliked other bosses before.")

_"Not in the sense that they were a tapeworm parasitizing me. Wouldn't help anything but my mood…if anybody ought to understand visceral dislike, it's you. Mister Whiskers."_

I frowned, struggling to pull on the damn boot. As usual, my feet were a bit swollen after all the blood being forced down to them and a certain lack of return encouragement. Bolsters only did so much.

("Call me that inside my head and I'll use a cotton swab to clean my brains.")

_*If you still had them we'd both be heading for some bolthole somewhere.*_

("Now who's being pointlessly clever? God, why does this feel so good?")

Laces gave me an excuse to get the life back into my fingers, and the refreshing compression around my ankles didn't itch too badly this time.

_*Don't tell me you're getting wood from leather.*_

("Sounds suspiciously mercantile. No, I mean, we're delving into a place hot enough to melt lead on the surface, with completely unknown levels of opposition and defense, but I just feel….well, minus waking up…actually pretty good. A lot better than I'd expect.")

And, as it occurred to me while I busily pulled the cuffs down over the boot tongues.

("How much are you radiating? Detectable? Huff-duff?")

_*Shit, has anybody called it that since about 1942? High frequency or otherwise direction finding, if it emits, it can be detected. Half of this is weird and subspace, I think, so it'd be harder to pick up than the carrier freq for the implants. Then again, you've got to have them to talk BACK….*)_

Her image shrugged, reverting back to unaccessoried swimsuit. The motion did interesting things in the vicinity of her chest and belly, and sparked sympathetic vibrations in mine.

("Broader spectrum, then. All right. When we can get away with it, EM discipline otherwise. You figure out my mood yet? Is Hamster awake?")

I sure couldn't. I ran my hands through my hair—probably starting to grey already, if my usual pessimism had its long-term effects, winked at my girl, and headed for the galley. I wanted a second try, at least at some vegetables and hopefully some water. I hadn't even SEEN the bathroom, but I preferred to tank up before I offloaded.

Jenny pulled out all the stops on the display illusion, making the doors seem to vanish. I knew I was gliding down the transport's main hallway, but she made it look like I was walking through my living area and into the kitchen. A ceiling projector shone down onto the cooktop, giving it the controls and general look of the cooktops in my kitchen, except Jenny didn't simulate the general mess that I tended to leave on them. It felt incongruous as hell to be in zero-g and still see blue skies and sunshine, but not unpleasant.

_ *I'm waking her up now. With that bugle call rag you liked so much. And a full motion and sound panorama of something from her ethnic heritage.*_

She sounded cheerful. Suspiciously so. I shook my head in vehement negation, picking up the can of corn from where it had rolled previously and scouring in vain for a can opener.

("The less I know, the happier I am!")

_*And doesn't that explain your mood? We don't know shit, just that you'll fly and I'll hack?"_

("Distinctly plausible. I was thinking that…")

And as I mumbled to myself, I kind of figured it out with a triumphant little cheer that hurt. Fuck it. I didn't feel like hunting for tools that may or may not have been there, so I set down the can on the countertop and drew my laser pistol. It spent so much time at my belt I barely remembered I had it, except at the range.

_*What the HELL are you doing? Just put it up against the underside of any corner!*_

("And you couldn't tell me this earlier?")

_*You were about to enlighten me on one of the great mysteries of the age…*_

Grumbling to myself hurt, but had some satisfaction quotient. As I put the can where directed and let the hidden magnet and pencil beam cut the lid neatly I thought back to what I'd been trying to conceptualize, but the can was on the cooktop and I'd dialed in a low heat before I remembered. Vishu alone knew where the actual controls were, but I assumed Jenny was manipulating them accordingly. I glanced up to see her perched on a deck chair on the welded-on lip of the container above me that served as my patio, sunning herself as I always had. She waved down and it was damn hard to remember for a minute that it was all optical trickery.

("So here's the thing.")

I leaned against the cabinets, looking affectionately up. Did I dare let myself get used to this level of closeness? It felt….good. It wasn't any more of a lie than usual, it was just done with fancier hardware.

("We've been chasing our tails on scant evidence, trying to be grand strategists and local tacticians. Everybody's on our ass—military, or at least they sure will be—PTMC, probably the UEG, probably the public once this starts leaking. We're the sharp end but we're trying to be the hilt, the wielder, the point, the target, and all at once…")

And that was when Hannah came in, about at the boiling point, and bounce-stalked her way up to me . She overshot and decked me in the chest to kill her momentum. I let myself absorb it and reached out to the counters to kill my own, eyeing her with annoyance. She was little, but it'd stung.

"Lions, you asshole? Bugles and stalking lions your programmed pussy thinks is an appropriate way to wake somebody up?! Jesus Christ, my asshole is puckered so tight I think I sucked up the fucking sheets! Tell that fucking bitstream bitch that if I ever meet her programmer I'll kick her in the cunt so hard her KIDS will have genital piercings! If it's a guy, I'll rip his balls off , knife him a cunt, and kick him in it!"

You could only do so much at once, and I managed to keep my eyes from darting upward—where Jenny probably no longer perched—and somehow managed to keep from even smiling. So it was probably due to too much multitasking that I reflexively answered.

"Breakfast?"


	27. A Dreadful Bore

Chapter 27: A Dreadful Bore

"She's a rattlesnake, so beware of her fangs.  
A lightning strike and it's straight through your veins  
No one can say, why she does what she'll do  
One mistake, diyo day"

-J.J. Grey & Mofro

_Good mood or not, he didn't quite thrust from all nozzles when it was warm and sunny.I nearly busted myself laughing and had to kill the running lights entirely before she emerged from the other side of the hatch, rubbing at her throat and pushing off as if she wished she had normal weight to properly stalk with. Jerome quizzically peered upward—into my satisfied smirk—and finally let himself go. Gales of laughter came out as he removed the mental stopper. It started to reach an almost-hysterical pitch before he got it under control again, wiping a tear from his eye._

("I needed that. What did you _do_?")

_Like a kid showing off their latest trick, I fessed up._

_*After she fled into the bathroom, I turned off the panorama, showed up via simple door, bowed, and said "Good morning, Ms. Talbot, I have tailored your unique notification alarm event based on your background and heritage as you have not specified a preference or a standard setting." She threw her boots at me hard enough to crack a display…*_

_Jerome reached for the can, arm pulled back into his sleeve for some insulation, and shook the warm corn by handfuls into his other hand, eating messily as he chuckled occasionally still. His speech was a little garbled but I could still make it out._

("The military past, sure, but the lions?")

_*Kenyan.*_

("Remind me never to piss you off.")

_*Way too late.*_

_The effect would have been better if I hadn't sunnily giggled. It was a coup I was proud of, dammit, and if she wanted to kick me right in the fork as my own programmer, she was free to do so. The armor would break her toes nicely._

("What happened to '_we need all the friends we can get?'")_

_I just shrugged._

_*Shared trauma cements human bonds. It's the principle behind boot camp and social soci…*_

("I KNOW that.")

_With an amused headshake, he wiped his hand clean on his jumpsuit and headed for the hatch out of the living section of the transport. Hannah had already gotten into the cockpit of the __Ball__ and was running preflight checks, otherwise I wouldn't've let him unlock the hatch._

("It just wouldn't hurt to act your age sometimes.")

_*And what age would that be, dear? At death? Of the airframe? Engine runtime? Your problem is every time I do something _fun_, you start rambling on about justice and honor and your silly little laws. You're just too noble for your own good. You're going to make a shitty dictator on some backwater colony world.*_

_As I enumerated the ages I displayed myself to him in the airlock in a corresponding fashion, still in the same bikini—from teenager, the image I usually kept out of vanity—to elderly crone, to toddler. _

("You know, you're lucky to be in something more durable than a body at this point. Imagine the army of assassins from every outraged victim of yours.")

_He slipped through the outer hatch once I opened it for him, glancing slightly guiltily over to the __Ball__. If Hamster saw him, she ignored him, and he pushed off promptly for my cockpit, which I retracted in the usual fashion. Everything shipside I reverted to normal control and programming. One of these days I'd stop intruding into every system he interacted with, but…You held the door for people, you did what you could where you could, and I supposed I regarded it as my duty to keep him safe and his life convenient in the little ways—maybe to make up for the ways I made it hell in the big ones. My selfish duty._

_Once he'd wiggled himself into preliminary place and put on the helmet, I dropped the cockpit and pressurized the bolsters to push him down that extra bit and into the cushion._

_"There we go. How're you feeling?"_

("Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? Next time I'll sleep in the bath. And remember to drink something. And tape my mouth shut.")

_"Need a swig from the emergency kit?"_

("Not yet. Won't talk for a while to avoid making it worse. Hell, I'm just excited to get back out there. You ready?")

_I brought his helmet to life, a full panoramic view. For a moment I had a pang of irrational jealousy that it wasn't as high-resolution as the displays in the __Carrot._

_"In the green, five by five. I'll start the air recovery pumps running and bring up commo, shall I?"_

("Give me a transmission indicator and a countdown to door open, please.")

_Obediently I threw up both on the display, the channel open to Hamster's shuttle as the pumps sucked valuable air back out of the cargo hold before I opened the doors. It wasn't a good idea to waste air when you needed it to breathe._

"You got a sane plan this time?"

_Hamster still sounded pissed. I wasn't really sorry, because I didn't think we were going to need her. Jerome coughed, winced, cleared this throat and answered. Apparently we'd abandoned formality somewhere above the lunar processing station._

"Deploy so the ship is between you and the relay. I'll bounce communication from my ship through the transport to you. Stand by."

_The transition from audible to deck vibration was rapid enough as the air stopped being dense enough to transmit sound directly, and when it looked like there was enough evacuation I dropped both sides of the loading hangar and gently shoved myself out. Hannah puffed the shuttle out the other way, doing something involved with the thrusters that left her hidden, and I kept us going toward the theoretical distance at a slow pace. I was doing my breathing exercises, running the reactor at high power to get the bubble generated just in case we needed some shielding_

_"Want to pull some velocity for evasion speed, or go slow and polite?"_

_The things you should've talked about ahead of time._

("Anything moving fast is probably keyed as unfriendly. Sensible precaution. Easy does it. Although I wanna engage something.")

_As usual, his heart rate was up in anticipation, and I could pick up his micro-twitches through the sticks, at a level below what he was probably even aware of. Judging from what his muscles wanted, a high-V corkscrew roll with a random velocity increment and a nose skew to keep us perpetually boresighting the relay. It wasn't a bad idea, but I preferred to give my brain's desires a try first._

_"Sit on it, big boy. My way is a lot safer."_

_I had the relay on sensors now. It was a pretty beefy thing, dedicated to all kinds of computing hardware I simultaneously didn't quite understand and wanted some of so I could play around and learn. Fixed defenses, big power receptors. If solar panels weren't so damn vulnerable to kinetic kills, it probably would have looked like some kind of exotic dragonfly instead of some sort of boring toad. With a cone antenna in its ass to pick up beamed polar power from the station we were supposed to avoid blowing up. I was actively emitting, but still...I guess I'd call it 'friendly' with the power levels. Lasers didn't worry me, I could duck and weave faster than the emitters could traverse, and missiles could be shot down at this range under my fire control. I wasn't even worried about railguns, I'd have some warning of their launch—if the sensors were working properly—and could jink as needed at this distance. We were playing it cautious against our better judgement, but being able to restore communications would be a massive boon. Not that there would be good news, but._

_"You know, I wonder how they store passwords."_

_It wasn't as incongruous as it sounded. Jerome grunted in interrogation._

_"If our authentication is a new one, this database won't have it. If it's tied into an old account, it should."_

_A pause, and the helmet's camera saw him grimace, looking as if he wanted to spit._

("Guess we'll have to bet on PTMC being lazy and cheap.")

_"Or we wouldn't _be_ here. Boy, they've got a trusting peri…whoops, here we go."_

_The interrogation bounced off my skin at a decidedly unfriendly transmitted power, nevermind the "UEG property" niceties of the hail and automated credential request. I translated our little PTMC slug into my language and sent it on the way, killing our forward velocity to hover at the edge until we got a goahead. If the database had been rewritten into Rihaansu, this would work. If I had to do it…I wouldn't be stupid enough to have it talk to humans in my language. But I'd set it up so that unless the ANSWER was in it, it wouldn't be authenticated. Of course, I was matching wits with somebody I hadn't even known existed until a few leaps of logical faith ago, so I was already on the shit-rolling-downhill side of the entire equation._

_It took a few seconds for any sort of acknowledgement to return, during which time every muscle in my body…"body"…was tensed. When I heard back, it was a distinct anticlimax and I locked out the sticks before echoing the text on the screen. Bureaucratic jargon but we were cleared for unrestricted entry for facility inspection and maintenance._

("What the fuck…it's never that easy. Is that _right_?")

_Because I was paranoid, I opened a channel back to the transport—standard PTMC encryption—and sent a copy of the translated credential message that had gotten us in, with a simple note purporting to be from Jerome of "this works". And lingered long enough on the channel to see it bounce to we got waxed, at least there were credentials. I might have solved the processing station issue as well, but that was getting ahead of myself._

_"I don't want to believe you'd seriously rather be under fire. We headed in or what?"_

_With a resigned mutter he twitched the sticks and I, ever obedient, headed in at an internal single gravity…belatedly reenabling the controls. _

("Well now I'm right back out of my depth again. Between the power plant and the relay, what first?")

_"What if the relay goes bad after we work on it? What's it going to do, message-spam us while we go tunnel-diving? What if something happens in the power plant or the power beaming array while we're working on the relay?"_

_I flashed up the image of the melted arm of the lunar processing station to make the point. All he had to do was fractionally nod against the restraints, and I blipped it off again._

("Remember when I said I liked having a clearly defined set of roles? And you accused me of not having any sense of fun left?")

_"Yes, sometimes I can even remember things from MULTIPLE hours ago…"_

_I commented wryly._

("Well, fuck this, I'm going to do something fun. Let's go check out the power plant, I've never seen it, just an old documentary. Even if there's nothing wrong, we still should do an inspection tour before we try to bring that relay back up.")

_To say that I was a little surprised and a little pleased would be an understatement. I was kind of curious myself, and starting to feel a little self-consciously old and obsolete, so it was with great pleasure that I leaped forward HARD at the goose of the stick, flattening him into the bolsters at a searing nine gees internal for a few seconds before he backed off down to what gave him more or less normal weight._

_"Gonna hot-dog this all the way in?"_

("This morning's check flight went fine, didn't it?")

_The relay swelled larger and larger, an unholy blend of machinery I didn't understand, until as it snapped behind us I did my neat little pirouette and applied his heavy braking thrust to approach Mercury. It looked like he was heading for the equatorial shaft that had an opening in the shadow side, so I threw up some overlays to help the transition from interplanetary to planetary speeds. The nice thing was the lack of atmosphere to work with, so I could keep the bubble mostly running. Perfect for a little high-speed sight-seeing trip. With gunnery. Maybe. _

_"The relay is squawking at you to slow to PTMC maintenance speed, and that you'll be issued an official UEG infraction if you fail to comply."_

("A Mercury speeding ticket? Are you kidding me?")

_"Frequently, but not at the moment. May I remind you that you don't have the authority to flout UEG laws?"_

_The surface was swelling closer now, the shaft looking like nothing more than a planet's gaping asshole, an image I fought to banish from my mind and, failing, put aside to share._

("I see what you meant, that caution is annoying. Unless it goes into a 'slow down or be fired on' level of squawking, just ignore it.")

_And that was more like it. He ran me down at the same steady speed, aiming for where I plotted out the mouth to be when we were there. Granted, at the kind of acceleration we usually operated under drift on orbit didn't much matter, but this was a precise thing. We wanted to accurately ram ourselves into Mercury's….dammit, there I went again. Ever-so-slowly, I faded in a muscle ring and some hair in around the opening, only to blink it off again as he caught the joke and started laughing._

_"It was too bad not to share."_

("Yeah, I'll owe you one.")

_You couldn't say that the infrastructure wasn't massive, though. PTMC had bored a shaft through each of Mercury's axes—pole to pole, through the equator, then 90 degrees along the equator and another one. I kept thinking of them as roll, pitch, and yaw, of course. It had happened before either one of us was born—obviously—but they'd put massive geothermal…..mercurothermal?...installations between the resulting hot sides and the core, using the machinery at the core to pump some ungodly power generation fluid through surface structures. As one surface station rotated out of the sun, another one would rotate in, and they'd probably installed thermocouples or peltiers or thermionics or something to exploit the difference between the surface structures sunside and coldside. I didn't know whether being able to bore through a planet and hollow out the core was a testament to PTMC's abilities or a warning shot across the bow of anybody who tried to mess with them. Generated power went up to the north polar transmission station, the southern one served as a complete redundant backup. It was completely unattended, completely automated, because nobody wanted to deal with planet-delving to fix something broken. If you designed things intelligently enough, you didn't really need human intervention. Same for the relay, it was too important to trust to monkey meddling._

_"You ever wonder what made those shafts in the first place?"_

("PTMC drones of some variety? I miss you in my head.")

_It was sweet, but. I riffled more pages in the big database, an eyebrow raising as I finally navigated enough indexes to get back to the original bid specification and construction contracts for the generator core chamber. The scale on that….that couldn't be right. It looked like one of those missile hulks, but the measurements were all wrong. If the relay were up, I could query the serial number and get an asset disposition, but. And the sun was between us and Shiva._

_"Don't even want to try it with the bubble up. Take a look at this bad boy…"_

_I threw it up on the screen in false-color to highlight surface irregularities, and felt Jerome spin me and brake to a halt—hovering a scant twelve miles above the surface—as he studied it. Studded with red and green like some sort of diseased Christmas tree, and with horn antennas protruding from its sensor dome as a bizarre crown of spikes, it looked like nothing I'd ever seen in the admittedly short list of drones I'd had time to run through. I put a scale marker with a question mark, because I really doubted it was a full hundred feet from muzzle to muzzle._

("That can't be right. Not even Shaker missiles run that launching size. Unless they made a supershaker?")

_"Why would they need to? Isn't one big enough? It looks like, if the schematic is right…"_

_That I could let speak for itself, and I overlaid a wireframe diagram onto the thing. The plumbing and drawings were right for a mid-sized fusion plant, and the fuel tanks had a spiderweb of piping to a large number of controllable thrusters. What worried me, though was the note in the initial contract that specified the UEG document that gave a limited license for the use of primary beams in a civilian application, and I blinked it a few times beneath the wireframe._

("That is a big bastard…but limited license? Even if it's still there, it wouldn't have primaries NOW. What the hell are those 'docking ports' for?")

_"If it's even there. And you fucking hope that the hardware was disabled and not just locked out in software. And probably for something to dock with. Let me..."_

_I zoomed way, way in on the plan, although its resolution was limited. There was a power distribution system of some sort going to every port….oh hell._

_"Great. If it's there, it's a drone mothership. Equipped to recharge them."_

("Fantastic! Which them is 'them'?")

_Fractured syntax aside. I shrugged my icon beside the wireframe and threw up a few best guesses for what was in the catalog, about the right age, and suitable for drilling and blasting out some of the side passages._

_"Understand this is like running through a library and trying to grab the right book without stopping, and find the right page while jumping over tables. I can't promise accuracy."_

_Jerome pursed his lips in a silent whistle, kicking in a bit more thrust to resume our dive inward…this time at a saner velocity to my thought._

("Built around a Vulcan cannon? Nasty little customers. Any idea of ammo capacity?")

_I was already looking, any kind of internal parameters the databases bothered to list. I'd never actually gone mining, despite the spaceframe, unless you counted a vacation through the belt once with Dad and Mom. They'd pulled some strings and managed to get their old single-seater recertified for extraplanetary use one last time and we'd gone hunting for another big diamond rock like the one they'd found and retired on. We didn't find anything other than a good-sized chunk of nickel—it'd made a nice coffee table, milled down from a solid lump-but it'd been kind of fun. Nevertheless, I was glad they'd struck it big enough that Jerome didn't have to do it for decades on end…and that he'd instead been a stupid enough teenager to get himself sent to Io and spend decades under fire instead._

_Viewed in that light, mining seemed a lot safer. The rocks didn't often shoot back, and the only times you had to worry about kinetic kills were stray debris or wandering into a mass driver's separation path. It counted as a vacation if it was easier than what you were used to, or if you were used to it but didn't HAVE to engage in it any more…_

_"Enough to hurt me pretty bad. And they're a little 'smarter' than we've been seeing. Good drilling program…keep safe, engage the target zone on command, retreat, reload, expose minimum area to the rock face where possible."_

_I could feel Jerome's right arm twitch upward, my guess was that he'd tried to palm his face reflexively._

("So you're telling me that if these things are down there, and we run into a problem, they're going to vomit Vulcan rounds on us from cover and try to lay down suppressive fire?")

_"I'm telling you to use homing missiles and spike the little fuckers if you have to, because I can't guarantee they're going to stick around in our line of sight."_

("Pickle away. Can we resupply at Utopia Planitia? McQuarrie I'd prefer to sit out.")

_"This whole fucking thing I'd prefer to sit out. We probably can…could kite a draft on our account with 30-days payment terms…if Dravis can't arrange something."_

_And the idea of relying on him for anything for me was rather repellent._

("I love how we're both assuming we're going to get jumped.")

_He commented in passing, guiding me into a few degrees of roll with what felt like a gentle urging caress on my hip._

("We're past, with valid clearances, Dravis said the facility wasn't running PTMC software, the worst thing we have to worry about is an old drone mothership.")

_As the designated high-speed research librarian once again I was busy putting pieces together that nobody would bother to give me a big-picture view of._

_"If it's got docking ports for drones, and some way to refuel them, and it was using primaries to drill the shafts in some fashion, where do you think the drones get their programming from?"_

_I heard him sigh and kick me over into a full three high-speed rolls in frustration before responding. It was nice to dance with him, in my fashion, whatever the reason._

("Santa fucking Claus? All right, so we may have something really, really big that's been corrupted. But how?")

_Sometimes he could be so obtuse._

_"That relay can bounce transmissions to fucking Pluto via subspace and do it without transmission lag. Do you think it can't reach down from orbit?"_

("Well, I didn't think it would be pointed down here…")

_Sometimes I could be so obtuse._

_"…But there'd probably be return telemetry to the power uplink. And PTMC would probably keep their options open in case they ever had to bore another shaft."_

("So let's not do anything that'd take it out of standby…")

_"Like ace combat flying under a PTMC maintenance ID?"_

_He got the hint and we sedately approached the shaft's entrance. Refractory ceramic and bulky squat structures loomed out of the darkness, lining its mouth, as he made a subtle yaw adjustment and we entered the planet itself. I had the bubble up and running and while there wasn't MUCH dodging room inside the borehole, there was enough for a bit of movement and to keep the shielding perimeter where I usually liked to for a good blend of field density and agility. It was an impressive piece of construction—the walls were even smoothed—and the only thing that gave any real sensation of speed was periodic joints in the massive pipes lining the tunnel around us. It was almost soothing and I used the time to try out my sensors, turning them up to the kind of power a maintenance ship might well have. The increasing heat ahead—and the relatively large bulk of the core installation—did a good job of masking anything smaller. Say, drones. But I could 'see' something decent-sized ticking over below, separate from the main generator and all the massive pumps._

_"I can't really tell what's down there, but I think they DID leave the big boy in place."_

("Next time remind me to just get the postcard instead of sightseeing, will you?")

_"What would that look like, exactly? 'McQuarrie Welcomes You to the Hellball'? 'Hardly Working at Utopia Planitia, Wish Your Construction Was Here'?"_

"More like 'Sol Long, Folks'. Or 'Only Two Hundred Light-Hours To Wall Drug'."

_I chuckled at that, pulling the wireframe off the display and rendering everything in reddish light as we approached the hollowed core. Jaded as we were, both of us gasped in wonder as the tunnel mouth widened out and we came through into the huge cavern, Jerome bleeding off speed in a hurry. All around us stretched half-molten iron walls, blasted out of solid planetary core, and in the center of the massive space stood a mechanical pillar with extensions into each of the shafts. It must've been a couple hundred feet in diameter, big enough that I could see an inductive recharging tunnel through a point just a little left of center from our entrance. Everything glowed with heat, strange to see in vacuum, and the sheer scale of the generator assembly managed to make the mothership docked to the maintenance port look diminutive._

_"Well…that answers that. At least it's not…"_

_Rather than bother answering, I just printed its paint-blisteringly strong hail across Jerome's helmet display._

_"TRANSMIT MODE SELECTION OR UPDATE FILE"_

("Do you…?")

_"I have no idea. Remember what happened last time?"_


	28. Sudden Brownouts

Chapter 28: Sudden Brownouts

"PLAN, v.t. To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result."

-Ambrose Bierce

I remembered what had happened last time, and it'd involved a substantial degree of unpleasantness. If Jenny didn't know what to pick…

("You have no idea what to select?")

_"You think they include a fucking maintenance manual for a 30-year-old piece of hardware in the standard part number catalogs?!"_

Put like that. I goosed up the thrust a little to get us a look around the gigantic chamber, curving close to the generator and keeping our wings oriented to it. 'Up' turned into the walls and 'down' turned into the generator column itself.

("Tag and keep hostiles if you find 'em'…")

As soon as I said it, my helmet lit up with pulsing red threat icons and little icons of what she'd found. A key summarized the findings as a whole crapton of drillers and a few red missile hulks, although I wasn't sure if the color was to designate a threat or if they were actually that color. The hulks were parked in the recharger, and the drillers clung to the sides of the mothership like ticks. Fortunately, nothing was moving.

_"Hail repeats…TIMEOUT IN THREE. Want to do anything?"_

We were recognized as a PTMC maintenance flight, we didn't have any kind of update.

("Can you tell it to stand by, but do it in your language so we can see if it's corrupted?")

_"Teach you yet. Hang on."_

I had to jink hard to avoid a thick crossbar supporting the pipes that ran up another shaft, but at least all the drones that had come up on the threat display so far were on the mothership or in the recharger. And they weren't doing anything. Warily I backed off on the throttle again and eased away from the generator, hanging in the middle of the space with the thickness of the generator between us and the mothership.

_"It acknowledged the command. So it's been corrupted. But at least it's listening…"_

"I'll take what I can get! Can you tell it to shut down for maintenance?"

An agitated flat cartoon Jenny shrugged at me and held a phone to her ear for a moment.

_"Wrong syntax…I think this is the command for a global drone shutdown and it's telling me I haven't authenticated in the system."_

("Well, authenticate!")

_"What do you think I'm doing!"_

If I had to answer that honestly, I had very little idea. It couldn't be too old a software version, or that damned update wouldn't've worked at all, so if we could figure it out here we could exploit that ruthlessly elsewhere. As long as I didn't have to pit us against primaries.

_"It just says TIMEOUT IN TWO…"_

("What happens when it times out?")

_"We'll fucking find out in two, I'm a little busy right now."_

At least I had a moment to plan the attack run I was still hoping to avoid. I kept coming up way short on missiles, though, leaving me with just gunnery to tackle either the mothership or the drones, and of course try to avoid damaging the installation. Damn Dravis, he could've SAID something about this.

"Throttle up...we may need shielding."

_"On it. I can't get through this damn system, maintenance level access is different than system level access and it's running on a restricted user privilege, can I try to exit maintenance mode and get in the usual way?"_

Hell if I was going to get in her way. What was there to lose?

("Take it, do what you can.")

The reactor power indicator was orange, running at 90%, with the temperature gauge still in the green. If we had to do too much hot work in this place, though…well, one problem at a time.

_"NULL SELECTION. EXIT MAINTENANCE. PRIOR MODE RETURN. I think that's good."_

I let myself take a deep breath, but not relax yet.

_"WARNING INTRUDER DEFENSE ACTIVATED!"_

What the hell!

("I thought you had it! Give me fire control!")

_"Wait for it…!"_

I could see the Vulcan drones and beginning to disperse as the mothership disengaged its clamps and lit off its thrusters to move to the middle of the enclosure and wobble in our general direction. The hulks began to rise.

_"WARNING, PTMC MAINTENANCE FLIGHT SEEK SAFE DISTANCE…? It still recognizes us? We might actually…"_

That was when the missile lock alert flashed across my field of view, one of the hulks in the recharger suddenly strobing red, and when I clamped down on the missile launch pickle and main trigger both, kicking the pedals to get us some sideways distance. A salvo of four missiles spat from the pods, two at a time, and I felt Jenny's nose shake as the Vulcan spewed rounds downrange for the scant moments we were aimed down the other end of the tunnel. A single homing missile emerged from the brief fireball—their thruster propellant igniting explosively as the massed fire wreaked havoc in their tight quarters—and faltered before curving for us. A stab on the pedals again to yaw the nose around and I crammed on the throttle, a tight stomach-wrenching curve around the pillar and jinking downward past the pipe supports, and the missile blew a harmless chunk of metal out of the support instead of Jenny's engines. Unfortunately, the Vulcan drones were spreading outward from the mothership in either direction and we were heading straight for them.

_"Save the fucking missiles for the big fucker!"_

Easy for her to say. I came in hot and damn nearly ran into the mothership, the two giant muzzles looming horrifyingly huge in my vision before Jenny took control away long enough to engage a vicious sideways spiral that ran the ship close enough to make the bubble take about a twenty percent hit from matter impingement alone. I could _feel_ the Vulcan rounds from diverse sources slam into the hull, adding vibration and a touch of skew to the controls like lethal hail, but there was enough shielding to slow them down to avoid any immediately serious damage that I could tell.

("Fuck this ballistic ballet!")

Jenny could fly backwards as well as forwards in vacuum, and I exploited that ruthlessly to bring the nose around to face what we'd just departed from. She kept her velocity vector, leaving us pointed backward so I could salvo off another two homing missiles on general principle to discourage pursuit. Both found targets and streaked away at divergent angles, detonating in brief puffs of flame and making two driller icons wink out. I was feeling mildly pleased as Jenny began to round the pillar and complete our circuit, until I saw an endless flood of green plasma balls begin to erupt from the mothership's muzzles. Most of it was headed away from us…for now…although a few of the first balls were already beginning to round the pillar toward us.

_"Stop wasting the goddamn missiles! Especially now!"_

Jenny sounded pissed, and I could see why. A plasma cannon was one of those weapons that lent itself to indiscriminate use—you couldn't aim it, you just suggested. Ionized like ball lightning, they tended to travel toward metal when expelled, or drift aimlessly, or follow reactor emissions—ours would do fine—or curve back to the muzzle and ground themselves, or fizzle, or explode…that much energy in that unpredictable of a package was the weapon of choice of pirates, who appreciated the micro-EMP effects, or outlaws who just wanted a bad reputation. The few balls that were drifting back toward the mothership—still accelerating—exploded against its hull without visible effect other than some paint damage. And I'd never seen anything vomit plasma in this kind of volume. It was _worse_ than flak, it was like absolutely random point defense.

("Plasma won't touch that, how are we supposed to?!")

One thing for sure, I didn't want to fly ass-backwards into that approaching storm. It was still disgorging plasma at the same amazing rate, and the entire chamber was starting to fill with the little balls of death. Some sight-seeing trip…this was all new, and all horrible. I shoved the throttle forward—or at least tried, given the limited stick movement—and as the power built against our direction of movement, did a little tapdance on the yaw pedals, holding down both the laser and Vulcan triggers and giving thanks for Jenny's reflexes. Ropes of coherent light flicked on and off, briefly connecting us to one driller or another, all four muzzles diverging independently. The hum through the cabin was loud enough for me to feel it through my bones, and mixed with the constant staccato percussion of the Vulcan rounds downrange and the occasional accent of them smacking into the armor from out there it made for a good opening movement in the mechanical devil's symphony that was us at work. It was all I could do to dodge the plasma balls as we accelerated through the first cloud. Some of them were seeking the drillers, some tracking us, some lazily drifting toward the recharger tunnel or trying to catch up with the mothership, and while I could evade most of them, I couldn't get them all. To keep from hitting three, I had to veer straight up into one, which grounded itself enthusiastically out through the shielding and partially onto the cockpit. My display flickered and when it came back, the reactor was running at 105% and the shielding was down to 68%. If it fell to zero, we were back on thrusters, the more damage we soaked up, the slower we got. That wasn't sustainable down here.

_"Just keep your fucking pickle finger elsewhere and close up."_

_That_ wouldn't take much. The driller icons behind us and still in front of us were trying to duck for cover behind the pipe supports. Jenny drew their fire paths in as if we were in atmosphere and they were using tracers, which helped pinpoint them but did nothing to stop the rattle of rounds against the hull or the shield erosion. We were coming around that pillar damn fast for an enclosed space, and I wasn't at all surprised to see the rear of the mothership suddenly pop into sight. The one thing you could say for the approach was that its own bulk had cleared a sort of trail through the plasma storm filling the room…and Jenny braked savagely to a stop, and fired off another four missiles without my intervention. Feeling a bit left out as they curved outward, I held down both triggers and tried to aim the nose at the approximate location of the transmission horns. I had the satisfaction of seeing a few of them puff into sparkling dust or slag down before the mothership began to turn around to face us, still spewing plasma like it was going out of style. Jenny's missiles hit thruster nozzles, causing secondary explosions that rocked its bulk, and for a moment I hoped there'd be enough feedback through the lines to bring the whole thing down, but we just weren't that lucky. It did seem to be moving a little slower, and I was worrying about how much she'd let it turn toward us when I felt us streak forward again. The drillers that had come around the corner of the pillar toward us ran right into the enormous cloud of fresh green balls, and the wireframe icon of the mothership began to laboredly halt its turn and turn back to pursue us once again as we streaked forward and around. I felt the nose dance and watched as Jenny pierced the drillers that had drifted the other way—where we'd initially come from—with merging white beams.

("Take guns, I've got the stick.")

Now that I knew what she wanted to do, I could do the large-scale piloting while she modified my inputs to bring fire onto targets. The occasional impact of a plasma ball I couldn't avoid kept dropping our shields and temporarily glitching the displays, and at one point I felt the entire spaceframe shudder as the shielding indicator dipped to 40% and the reactor went to full military power as she fought for speed and space.

_"Right over the reactor, you lucky son of a bitch, any deeper and you'd be ejecting, any further back and…"_

She threw us into a stomach-wrenching dive, slammed out a five-barrel simultaneous salvo that knocked a driller into the semi-molten iron floor and started its slow melting process, and veered up hard enough to leave me seeing stars to avoid a ball. Plasma trailed in our wake, chasing our emissions but slow enough that it wouldn't catch up until we slowed down. The walls of the chamber were acquiring glowing pockmarks where stray balls had spontaneously veered toward their iron content and gone off.

_"….say goodbye to atmosphere work…"_

Any further forward and it probably would have come through the cockpit and lit me on fire, but I didn't mention it. I didn't much think about any collateral damage that might be happening to the entire core generator either. We came around the pillar again and ran up on the backside of the mothership like last time….except this time we had four less missiles and a bunch of plasma sniffing our ass. Jenny rippled off her double salvo, guiding them in for thrusters on the same side again, and—since from the corkscrewing trails she looked busy—I pulled hard back and threw in a half-roll at the top, doing a neat Immelman back the other way. Our personal green shadows couldn't track that hard—well, not most of them—and a fair number seemed to be content to plow into the back of the mothership for good measure. This time I slowed down a little, because the icon was so slow to turn. It listed significantly and seemed to having difficulty staying in the center of the available area. As a bonus, I speared the drillers as they popped from behind pipe supports for a few moments, until one behind us landed a sustained burst. While all four lasers harmonized on a single target made short work of their impact-only armor, they didn't point backwards and the only thing to do was dial in some speed. A blinking schematic of the landing skids popped up, one crosshatched in black. Well, shit, we'd figure out how to land later. Targets were getting pretty thin on the ground, and I guided us close to the floor of the chamber—well, floor was relative—and let Jenny flush a few more drillers with Vulcan fire on our return pass. Staying low meant there was one less avenue for balls to approach from, but one less dimension to dodge. One ball in particular suddenly appeared in front of the nose, heading straight for the cockpit, and I had time for a frozen moment of horror before Jenny pogoed violently upward to let it pass underneath harmlessly and plow into the walls, making just another crater.

("Thought you never saw the one with your name on it!")

_"They spelled it wrong."_

A heart flashed across my vision for an instant before we came tearing up on the mothership again, still belching plasma. It was hard to find parts of the walls that hadn't been scarred and cratered at this point, and I spared a moment's glance to the recharger passage. The last thing we needed was to dodge homing missiles through this mess, but fortunately the first salvo—excessive as she'd claimed it'd been—had taken out every last one that I could see and now the pile of scrap was already faintly glowing and slagging down as it was induction-roasted. Four more missiles lit off, streaking for the crippled side and in intricate trajectories to go down and above and strike at the vulnerable nozzles. What worried me was the trefoils that began to blink yellow on either side of the display, indicating that the only things that were up next were missiles we really didn't want to play with in a confined space, much less around anything important. This time I rolled left and pulled up hard, letting the plasma in our wake once again return to sender and not waiting for the mothership to turn around before putting the generator's big pillar between it and us. Three drillers were left behind, and I threw one back in pieces with a five-round Vulcan shotgun while Jenny speared the other one and a stray plasma ball impacted the back of the last driller while it floated behind a pipe support. Wreckage drifted slowly in the direction its momentum had last taken it, and the volume of ambient plasma seemed to be dropping. Fortunately, drillers seemed to be just as good plasma targets as we were, and I flew in slow figure-eights to try and shake the incoming few balls left.

_"Next pass will have to be guns…if there is one."_

In wireframe, the mothership sagged inexorably toward a wall of the chamber, the remaining thrusters on one side not enough to hold it from a collision. The plasma abruptly stopped and Jenny brought her reactor back down to a mere 100% as we waited for the last of it to disspate.

("Now what?")

_"Nothing good. I'm reading a barely-controlled power excursion..."_

She zoomed the display in on a falsified image of the full mothership, waggling the sticks to indicate she was going to take over station-keeping. I could see the remaining thrusters flaring hotter and harder than before, a few sputtering out and one blowing up entirely, as it tried to lift back up. The edge in contact with the floor of the cavern was already beginning to glow and sag slightly.

("You tell me if that bastard looks like it's going to blow itself up.")

_"Unlike you, I want to live. I've got a few broken toes but it doesn't hurt as long as I'm moving."_

It was a pretty low butcher's bill and I raised an eyebrow at the comment.

("And the rest?")

_"You wouldn't appreciate the anatomical translation."_

A status display winked in along the side that the mothership wasn't visually occupying. Every panel indicated minor damage, with the most severe impact being to the reactor access plate—shaded deep into the red, and the second-worst being the entire cockpit, bright yellow. I imagined Jenny with bloody sores all over, a chest wound deep enough to expose ribs, and her entire head singed, and grimaced.

("I just hope it doesn't hurt.")

All the thrusters on the mothership went dead, and with an actinic ripple of shorting electricity across its frame it slowly sank back to entirely rest on the semi-molten bottom of the chamber.

_"Feels like I got hit by a garbage barge, but you should see the other guy. Reactor output is zero."_

("Looking at him now. Um, how's the generator? We didn't just destroy the solar system's biggest engineering project, did we?")

Now that there was time to think again. Jenny took a worryingly long time to respond, while I wiggled the stick and took back control, going on a slow cruise around the room once again. There were a lot of impact craters on the pipes, on the supports, on absolutely everything…and a lot of driller wreckage to dodge as it drifted…but nothing seemed like it was leaking.

_"We got lucky. Don't count on that. Everything's more or less nominal, and I show no drone signature…wait, one."_

She threw up a red missile hulk icon, and in wireframe in the recharger tunnel I could see it rock from side to side, trying to escape the pile of debris that was all that was left of its comrades. Some internal directive, in the absence of the mothership, must have suggested it try to dislodge the debris with the only weapons it had at its disposal, because the wireframe view displayed the outline of an explosion and then clarified to show a slightly different orientation of the pile.

_"Make that zero. Wish they were all that easy. Bubble at full, throttling back. I'm going to need to get a refuel back in the __Carrot__, this isn't exactly easy on the reserves."_

("Isn't exactly easy on our nerves.")

_"I was just thinking that if you wanted an easy life, you shouldn't've stolen your teacher's aircar. You might have had a nice simple career. Politics, mining, UEG fighter pilot…was the pussy worth it?"_

I liked to forget that she knew most details of my life, for precisely these sorts of reasons.

("Since you ask, I didn't even get any. Crashed on takeoff due to inadequate maintenance, no way to save it. No way to get any afterward, the cops got there too fast. And we were kind of shaken.")

_"Well, your taste in women has improved. If I do have to say so myself. And it's nice to know your piloting skills are a little better too."_

("Is it all these shafts that have you fondly thinking about our sex life?")

With a smirk I lifted her nose and headed for the same shaft we'd come down. There was no way in hell I was going to brave the power shaft, or risk coming out sun-side.

_"Please, PTMC's laid bigger pipe here than you could ever hope to match."_

("Yeah, well, if you've got a borehole this wide, you have to be a size queen.")

This time I was more than willing to break local speed limits exiting, and I shoveled metaphorical coal until it was as fast as I felt comfortable with, joints streaking past quick enough to make the pipe seem to strobe.

_"Not to distract you from your favorite topic of stretched holes, but have you figured out what the hell happened back there?"_

I hadn't exactly had much time to think about it but with a quarter-shrug before the bolsters clamped back down I voiced the only thing that came to mind.

("What's the thing you make sure doesn't happen in a weapons-hot intruder defense state?")

Image-Jenny threw up her hands in exasperation.

_"Right. Identify the intruder. Identify non-combatants or allies. Don't shoot your allies."_

("Friendly fire isn't.")

_"I know it's juvenile to want to gloat over a defeated enemy but damn if it wouldn't be satisfying to extract information from the worm in you monkeys' apple the hard way."_

("If they're anything like you, I think the best medicine is enough joules to flash-boil the water in their skull.")

_"Isn't that sweet. The doctor is decidedly IN."_

A proper three dimensional image of her appeared across my display, wearing a lab coat and stethoscope. Her hair was tied back in a neat ponytail and a smoking laser rifle was cradled across her chest to match the grim expression on her face.

("We'll get our chance to turn the tables, dear. Even if it's by fucking up their plans. Speaking of…that intruder defense thing isn't going to have the array firing on us, is it?")

From the frying pan into the fuckup. Without missiles we were limited to either direct-fire or unwarranted escalation. Wasn't much I could do but grit my teeth and notch forward the throttle. Speed would be life if that thing opened up on us and caught us anywhere near the surface.

_"I…normally I would think not, but intruder defense fires on what it shouldn't. Unless I can cancel it through the regular access, we may have to turn around and go out another shaft, skirt around where it can even reach."_

Better and better.

("And salvage the relay how?")

_"Hannah was blathering about being an elint specialist, she might have a back door. Tawny's codes might work. Of course I'm going to use those in the first place to get in…station managers should have something not too far from root access."_

Scorn dripped from her tones at something I didn't even want to get into, and it was with some surprise that I felt the push from the back as she braked to a stop, giving us a boresighted view of space, about half a mile of the tunnel to go.

_"My way, then your way."_

("If it _works_ I don't give a shit whose way.")

Her image disappeared, replaced by a still picture of her as a schoolgirl chewing on a strand of her hair and frowning down at a test on a desk. As usual, it was spot-on to how I'd remembered her, and I squinted absently to read the title of the test. As near as I could make out it read ""Advanced Communication Final" but the resolution on my helmet wasn't good enough to make out the actual first question—if she'd bothered to put one.

_"It's letting Tawny in…but I can't cancel intruder defense without some sort of user escalation. Who do we know that's got more pull?"_

("I ain't calling that bastard again yet. WE have more pull.")

_"We do?"_

I was proud of myself, dammit, for thinking of this one, and if she'd already tried it I was going to have to sling my tail between her legs and slink back to the Carrot to get Hannah to try to establish comms with a sizeable time delay.

("That directive giving us absolute priority and access? Translate that and feed it through. With Tawny's access, it should be recognized as legitimate. Then try to log in AS us.")

Jenny animated the schoolgirl picture, looking up at me, spitting out her hair and holding up her pencil with a dangerous sparkle of enthusiasm in her eyes. She bent to write, falling quickly into a simple animation as she returned her attention elsewhere.

_"It's a good idea but if we're recognized as legitimate under our own ID, then we'll still be in danger of being fired on. You're betting the relay won't fire on its own base station."_

("I'm betting on PTMC thinking about internal sabotage and bad PR before designing it. The relay covers space approaches, the leftover drones handle near-surface or internal threats…")

_"Strictly speaking you're betting that the lockouts are hardware and it physically CAN'T bring ordinance to bear, instead of reflaggable software priorities."_

("Strictly speaking I'm betting that we're owed a little good luck for a fucking change.")

_"You're not breathing vacuum yet and I still am, isn't that good luck enough today?")_

("I'd settle for finding a method that would let us reclaim those orbital stations and the Mars milbase.")

The schoolgirl glanced up and rolled her head from side to side, my words appearing in a straight-edged font in an unheard mocking cadence as she moved her mouth.

_"Dravis was right, you do want to drastically scale down your direct participation. Where was this urge this morning?"_

I'd take it in the offered spirit.

("It's not until I get my dick in the meatgrinder that I stop and think maybe I should stop pushing…")

_"Just assume I made the obvious personal sexual joke there, will you? For something with that much computational power you'd think it'd update its database faster."_

("I hate this. There's nothing I can do while you work, and you can do anything and everything while I work.")

_"A little emotional support goes a long way."_

The schoolgirl glanced up at me, pursed her lips, blew me a kiss, and winked while licking her lips and nibbling deliberately at the end of her pencil in a distracting fashion.

("I'd do more, but you always hug me so tight I can't even move.")

I wiggled but the bolsters held me in place.

_"It's for YOUR OWN GOOD DARLING because the world is full of people who would try to hurt you and you're MINE MINE ALL MINE."_

For a moment the image cackled soundlessly before sweetly smiling again and returning to work.

("You have an interesting curve of fear versus love plotted against length of time known.")

_"What an interesting thing to say! I'll remind you of that later. For now I think I'm in. Logging out as Tawny….logging in as us. OK, we're actually in. And…you ordered the relay out of intruder defense mode and into normal operational mode. And…"_

If I had that imaginary pencil, I'd be chewing on it.


	29. Replicative Phrasing

Chapter 29: Replicative Phrasing

"A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arise from words."

-Edmund Burke

_Going from a simple interface with a limited set of commands to the full interface was what I usually saw when I got my electronic tendrils properly into any given computer system, so I reflexively opened my full attention to whatever IO was going on. It was like stepping from a sound-isolated room into the frontlines of any major ground conflict and damn near pinned my metaphorical ears back but I could just barely take it. Plenty was coming in…as you'd imagine…but nothing was going out again. Yup, the relay was 'down'._

_"And it IS in operational mode. Except still discarding all data that's not in the 'correct' transmission format."_

_Simplest thing in the world. I had a nice clean high-bandwidth root-access channel, and the file that was growing at a shocking rate was the next thing that caught my eyes, squinted as they were to discern useful patterns through the profusion of signals. A log of the messages queued for retransmission? When precisely had the relay gotten infected? If I could just get a timestamp, I could have some idea of when the little bastard was converted. I usually tried to let the boy know what I was up to, even if he didn't quite get it, because nobody liked waiting in ignorance._

_"My god, the backlog of retransmits is…"_

_Reading a magazine versus being slapped in the face by an unabridged dictionary was the best way I could think of to describe what happened when I tried to open that file. I slammed a hardware interlock on the channel down to a few thousand bytes a second and tried to regain my composure, throwing the image's test to one side and the pencil to the other and letting my hair assume the finger-in-light-socket-look that the rest of me was feeling. I put my face in those oh-so-young hands and took a moment before having my image stare out through the display at Jerome._

_"Even the log file is too big for me to open. I WAS going to dump a copy of the current software, retranslate it on the fly, erase it on the relay, and do a hot load…"_

_….about half of which probably just went over Jerome's head._

("Pretend I got that. There sounds like there's a but.")

_"There's a huge but. I don't have that much storage space on here. Not with me in here. I take up a lot of space."_

_At one point I'd sat down and calculated the difference in storage capacity between another theroretical Pyro with the same hardware and the same minus-me software, and come up with a figure that was a little surprising. On one level, it was flattering that what fit in a couple pounds of organic matter took a lot more digital space to replicate, on another it was vaguely unnerving to know precisely the bounds of my soul in terms of bytes._

_"You don't understand just how big a scale this is, because it's all 'just' computers. But the buffers are big enough that there's messages from all over the solar system for the past few DAYS in local storage. I can probably use them as temporary space, but if there's any kind of power outage they're going to be shuttling techs in from Earth for _months_ to clean up the mess."_

("Do you have to completely reload it? It's language-scrambled, sure, but can't you…")

_Jerome paused for a moment to collect his thoughts and I waited patiently, gradually opening back up that channel again to see if I couldn't dig around for some useful digital forensic data. The last couple entries in the transmit log ought to be particularly interesting…that mystery wide-band out toward Pluto and the botched update. If our saboteur was stupid, it would be sent out as soon as it was received, with a high priority as befitted a purely internal message. If our saboteur was smart, it could've been entered at any point…but with the checksum of the transmission I could at least pattern-match against the logs of incoming data. If they hadn't been purged. Or overflowed._

("It sounds hard and risky. Can you put a translator on both ends? Translate all inputs into the proper language, translate all outputs back into whatever they should be?")

_I pointed my finger at him and opened my mouth to tell him what a bad idea it was, but it wasn't a bad idea. _

_"Assuming I flip the flags back, you mean. And for good measure, put a comparison logic segment before the translator…if anything coming in is recognized as syntactically correct by the corrupted core logic, meaning it's in my language, blow the fuck out of the broadcasting ship and send up the alarm."_

_It really wasn't a bad idea. I was sure the throbbing in my temples was just the armor monitoring sensors, or the reactor fuel system, or something in the EM warfare suite running hotter than usual. Or maybe it was just psychosomatic. I could hear Dravis now, though. "And you thought it best to pass the solar system's message traffic through a known compromised system which may exhibit further aberrant behavior at any time?"_

("There's another but, isn't there?")

_I sighed and nodded, shrugging my shoulders helplessly._

_"It'd work. But Sammy would flip his shit. I'm going to have to do a decoder stage on the relay anyway to copy the existing programming through to those buffers."_

("If we break the relay, Sam's going to flip his shit anyway.")

_"If we fix it, he's going to flip his shit that we didn't fix it sooner. If you're willing to stake success on us not having shot anything important back there."_

("We broke the thing tourists pay to see and that PTMC would need to make another planetary-scale hole. Is that important enough?")

_When he put it like that…_

_"I saved the gun camera films. You know there was nothing in our contract specifying media silence upon completion, right?"_

_Yeah, I'd have to data-dump and sell short as we fled the solar system, but if I could convert the payment into tradeable goods or supplies…hell, if I could even use it to cache something more. Jerome didn't know, and wouldn't unless one of his little side projects resulted in a kid he acknowledged or we had to go into hiding, but there were supply caches all the hell over the system that would make sure a Corbell who knew about them would have access to resources for survival. Data, funds, supplies, weapons, accounts and passwords, blackmail material that was juicy enough to be useful at least a generation or two later in the case they didn't get opened for some time._

("Contingency plans for everything. Wonder what would have happened if we hadn't gotten along like a fuse and a match?")

_"If you broke my heart, you mean, back then? Dated for a while, dumped me? Well, if we got along indifferently enough that it was an option, nothing."_

_I could and occasionally did evade a direct question. Despite the reflexive 'you'd probably be dead', or the inevitable urge to arrange the mysterious disappearance of whatever floozy he'd been swayed by, I would still have cared enough about him not to do more than have her mistakenly arrested for some heinous list of crimes and detained for interrogation for a few days .I _still_ couldn't figure out why or precisely where I'd fallen so hard, but he was the glue that held my pieces together. Even though we were both coming unglued again as this stretched on._

_"BUT, yes, it's your call on this."_

("There's nothing I love more than making decisions I know almost nothing about. Fuck this sabotage, I don't want to leave anything in place. See if you can get origin data before you _change_ anything, just in case. I gotta think there's enough spare power capacity between space and the Sun to run something like this relay for a little bit longer.")

_"I'll get right on it, boss. There is a large possibility that I may find jack and shit, with jack having left the system."_

_I was already looking. The trick would be to let the relay's systems handle file access instead of reflexively reaching for it myself—the difference between watching the news and actually getting the facts. Hopefully the relay lied less. A little legwork…_

("I don't see how if it came through here you couldn't find traces.")

_"Did somebody request Professor Jenny?"_

("Dear god no! I'm curious but I'm juggling so much right now. Tell me whatever's operationally relevant, and we'll save the 'how' for theoretical free time.")

_I was a little disappointed but had the schoolgirl shrug and vanish in favor of something more librarian-esque. _

_"Short version, I could make it hard but not impossible if this was recent. If it was sent a while back, and waiting for a particular trigger—like I think we talked about a while ago—hard to say. I can at least find out how it got here and when, and maybe something about that mysterious Charon burst."_

_I hoped. It was straightforward enough to chunk the outgoing log down into bite-sized pieces and peer at them. I could see the transmission to Charon as the last one that'd been sent via the relay itself instead of through the PTMC software making it tick, and it didn't look good at all._

_"Real short version, fuck fuck fuckity fuck. Get this."_

_I blanked out the librarian and the view of the stationary borehole from Jerome's helmet and threw up what I could decipher. It was in my language outgoing, natch, but the content was just a list of ships, their registration information, and their unique fingerprint for sensor-detectable emissions. What worried me was three of the ships on that list—a last-gen UEG fighter registered to a Mr. St. Jon, a obsolete destroyer registered to a Captain Garcia at an electronic mail depository in the Belt, and II-JNY-01 registered to Uncivil War down on Earth in a shipping container with all the comforts of home that neither of us could ever go back to, a J. Corbell listed as pilot. I highlighted the entries in blinking blue._

("And this was beamed out to the Pluto area? That's all the mercs that Dravis interviewed, I think, because we're last on the list. Shit.")

_"You're damn right, 'shit'. Somebody knows we're on the case. Probably our saboteur. There must've been something in this package to set up a dead-man's switch. Whether or not PTMC got through to fix the issue or blow up the relay, the first PTMC ship in range trying to get in would've triggered it. So now something out there knows what forces are in play to respond to their crisis."_

("So our worm thinks that some odd one-off is trying to hold down an entire solar system of trouble? Doesn't that make them underestimate us?")

_"And that's about what I like to have happen. I just wonder how that data got out, because if we've got a worm in PTMC then we're….I'd say we're more fucked but at this point there's not really much possible along those lines."_

_And now I had yet more digging to do. The logic that spewed out the transmission in the first place was easy enough to trace, since the outbound log had the altered transmission parameters to use. Nothing in the code itself suggested any trace to origin…except the way it was built. And I finally saw how it'd even gotten the data, a stupidity which made me show up on the helmet just to slap my forehead._

("Just once today I'd like to see you find something that made you happy.")

_"The fucker pulled our file, then updated the HR system to reflect that he'd talked with us about this assignment, and probably some sort of personal assessment. Because that's something that other personnel managers would need to know about if we applied for work at some other location….so it naturally sent it out to the relay for side-band database updates. All this fucking filter does is catch HR updates, collect them, and spray them out to a preset set of coordinates on the next attempt at a maintenance access."_

_Jerome sighed heavily and closed his eyes for a moment, at least that was my best guess._

("That's almost elegant. Nothing on the second attempt, of course, because then the warning's already been given.")

_"And we nearly get our poor dumb asses roasted because there's no fucking manual for the menus."_

_I heard a stifled sporfle from the boy that dissolved into quiet chuckling._

("I never, never, _ever_, thought I'd hear you admit that instructional materials were any more useful than toilet paper.")

_The librarian-me grimaced at him and flipped the bird._

_"A well-designed system ought to be intuitively obvious. A poorly designed system requires time, experimentation, or readily available assistance to get things done. I still stand by that. This is well-designed, and to me points a number of potential fingers to our saboteur being within PTMC, highly placed enough to know their operations."_

("Knows their software too, but we knew that. What else?")

_The question that was rapidly proving to be the bane of my fucking day. I threw up an image of a spinning drone as a sort of hourglass equivalent, small and flat so he didn't mistake it for an actual hostile, and got back to getting my hands dirty. I _knew_ the coordinate system, or at least it was simple enough to feed through my navigational 'memory' and find out what had been there at that time. Sure enough, the beam spread would've reached Charon and Pluto and points beyond with enough oomph to be easily read by anything modern enough to talk to the relay at all. That wasn't unexpected, so I closed the outgoing log and went for the received log, which was growing by leaps and bounds. Eyes tight shut, I stuck my fingers in and searched for anything that felt like a PTMC update. Only one entry floated to the surface and I grabbed it and pulled it out of what came across as a roaring waterfall, far enough to see the data that came with it. The metaphors kept getting switched around on me, and I always wound up feeling like a triathlon competitor when I was done with whatever system I was into. Somewhere there was a glitch, but trying to fix it—worse, having some unclueful external tech bit-bang on it—was just as great an idea as performing brain surgery on yourself with nothing more than a drill and a hand mirror._

_"Okay, the transmission did go out where Dravis claimed, and would've been easily readable. Better still, that system update came in via the normal authentication channels—straight from fucking Shiva."_

_It wasn't fair, I was already paranoid enough when left to my own devices._

("I was just thinking that our directive gave us authority to blow away Shiva and claim it was infected. I wrote it off as a bad idea and irresponsible abuse of power.")

_"Yes, and you're a goodie two shoes. Comparatively. Don't even start."_

("Don't tell me you _seriously_ think it's a good idea, then. We're not having that discussion.")

_"And if that's the problem? It came THROUGH Shiva, sure, but who actually wrote it? Some compromised contractor Earthside? A hijacked terminal somewhere in a lunar colony, codebase altered after the minimum-wage syntactic sugar-daddy knocked off for the day?"_

_That was how I'd have done it. In the list of shit I wanted to look up when subspace commo was up and running again, I added 'IT patch coding: LC-7?" If they outsourced their edits to whoever would do it the cheapest, well, you had to pass certain tests to live in a lunar colony, and you HAD to have a job. The air didn't exactly pay for itself. Remotely working on somebody else's codebase in your pajamas did have a certain appeal to a certain demographic. And since the UEG's response would be to assume that the entire colony was compromised—after drones probably took out their dropship—having all the evidence go up in primaries and hard radiation would be a great way to cover a trail._

("I can't really imagine our saboteur as some underpaid coder working for a hot-dog-and-macaroni budget.")

_"Well, assuming it's not somebody working THROUGH that cutout or system. The other options are either somebody outside this internal system with a real disturbing knowledge of PTMC software and procedures…or somebody inside PTMC itself. And that's where the problem comes in."_

_With the high-profile waves he'd been making…that had been freaking me out since the beginning…this was where one of those other enemies came in. That I'd been trying to warn him about. But I was kind and didn't explicitly mention it._

("I hate it when your paranoia is justified.")

_"And how often is that again?"_

("….Most of the time.")

_I grinned at him and went back to digging around._

_"Anything else you want me to try to find out?"_

("Anything else you think you would need to know? …That's immediately relevant?")

_There went my plan of harvesting banking details, passwords, blackmail materials, nifty little secrets or stashes, the usual collateral from a data dive. Old habits died hard. Nevertheless, I went through the transmission backlog looking for anything that mentioned us, only to find something with our callsign and directive reference as the address. I fished it out and let our access pull it up._

_"This is strange, there's something from Dravis for us. Tagged not long after we last talked to him and with a set of transmit flags that indicate it was too sensitive for a message torpedo."_

_Like he'd have known exactly where to launch the torpedo…and it wouldn't've survived the trip around the sun, they didn't have that much fuel and mostly ran ballistic._

_"'MD-1032, please note that our facility manifest lists an amply-armed command station and bore driller in the Mercury core station. Exercise caution to avoid damage.'"_

("To us or IT?")

_"Please, boss, can I nuke Shiva now?"_

("Maybe later, dear, if you're good. Would you be able to detect any sign of tampering?")

_Would I…yeah, just have the relay beam a copy of all incoming and outgoing traffic to my coded channel, then sort through it at my leisure looking for anything that didn't add up. I'd seen short-sleeved shirts fired out of air cannons at sporting events, but this would be a lot more like phone books fired out of an actual cannon. Complete with the wad and powder and friction igniting the pulp for that lovely fireball effect. Not what you wanted to aim at a crowd, at least not most days. His faith in me was touching but there were times there was no fucking way I could justify it._

_"You're standing at the bottom of a waterfall, somebody's playing fire hoses on your front and back, and you're trying to detect an eyedropper of food coloring that may or may not even be blue anyway. My original idea of getting some sort of ongoing tap on this assumed that our saboteur was _here_ to inject that patch, not that it sprang forth fully-formed from some sparky's department internally."_

_Dawning comprehension._

("And why not just put the food coloring in the water somewhere upstream? Or in the fire truck, I guess?")

_"It's the place that's hardest to find if you don't know anything upstream is wrong. I think you're getting it."_

("All right, so what more can you do here before we make Sammy flip his shit?")

_What could I do? What couldn't I do! Aside from a number of obvious options._

_"Not much that's relevant. I guess I'm ready for the boring part if you still want to give the goahead."_

("Yeah, let's test this process on something non-critical like a unique system comm relay before we try it anywhere IMPORTANT, like an outmoded Venus processing station. No pressure, babe.")

_I wasn't going to let him get away with anywhere near that degree of suppressed amusement._

_"Hey, if I fuck this one up, it's your ass in the hotseat explaining what you did, what you thought you did, why you thought it'd work, and what went wrong…and without dragging me into it. No pressure, darling…but at least we're safe in a hole in the ground if it all goes pear-shaped. Now shaddup and let me concentrate."_

_It felt like the entire mission was beginning to shake down into some semblance of sanity after all the talking, after all the plans changing, after all the drama and trauma. Building the translator stage was oddly involving but didn't require much thought beyond where to place the initial code blocks. In the same ways that assembling playing card sculptures went best when you tuned out and trusted your hands and judgment, once I'd figured out the structure I stopped monitoring most of the relay data that was streaming across the channel and focused on Jerome's breathing while letting the back of my mind steer the autonomous routines that were embedded in the electronic warfare bits. There was no shortage of free space to work in, and it was with a sudden mental start that I realized the translator stage was complete and had run out of my knowledge of my ex-language to use._

_"Well, you're going to shut down the relay now. Good luck, Mister Corbell."_

_Writing the message for rebroadcast was easy enough when you spoke the language, and the software didn't care exactly what it sent out. I had the ear of everything in the system that was trying to time-slice into the subspace modulations the relay was multiplexing…and it was a heady moment. All the quotes, all the things I could say and be heard, just the once, by everybody listening. Still, Earth was in tatters, the interplanetary logistic pipeline was broken and spewing figurative inefficiency across known space, the UEG was probably on a bit of a hair trigger, and this would be part of history. "Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto!" wouldn't be well-received._

_With a sigh, I shut down the receiving and transmission stages with a simple unscheduled maintenance notice, citing an anticipated return-to-service time of a depressingly normal few minutes from now. There wasn't a number to call for status updates, not really, so I listed 867-5309 with Shiva's prefix. With any luck that would be some receptionist who was just about to no longer have much free time. And, dammit, it was a karmic imperative that I sign my name SOMEWHERE in the entire affair._

_"Out of all the things I could have said….you owe me big. Nubile young people of unspecified gender polishing and waxing me, for starters."_

_I echoed the message to his view, heard him laugh, cough, and moderate the laugh, and went back to ignoring him for a bit. The buffers were clear, and the system had brought itself down to a basic operating system level enough that the file systems still were clean. I ran all transmitters up to half-power, cracking my knuckles before starting work, and told the entire install to copy itself through that decoding stage and to temporary storage in the buffers. Yeah, I had my arms around the entire process, but it was more out of foolish optimism that I could catch any overflow than from any serious expectation of being able to contain damage. As the transfer began to progress in a semi-orderly fashion I was able to echo a progress bar to Jerome. It was going….slowly, but not terribly so. Nevertheless I didn't want to divert any attention away to generate any animated graphics for his sake._

_"Mommy's riding the white tiger, but I think I can handle it. …Oh, and you can talk again."_

("If there's anything I can do to support your heroine habit?")

_"I'll let you know. I'm not going to try to change anything in the copy process, it'll keep until after we're done with this stage."_

_Speaking of things I couldn't do…by the time I could catch the problem phrases, fix them, and spew them back out, they'd be a few encyclopedia volumes of data behind and hilariously out of place. Better to let it verbally shit itself until it was done, then try to clean up a little._

("If I'm just going to be sitting here, will you deflate?")

_Took me a moment to process that. Like a good girl I let go, almost unlatching the canopy by long habit before catching myself in horror. Sure, the helmet and suit would hold air, but! I decided not to mention it out of a sense of both guilt and preoccupation. Jerome stretched every muscle and limb he could, making it a little difficult to ignore the control inputs._

_"If you're going to wiggle, at least hit the damn hardware lockout, this is not the time to be randomly caressing me."_

_He reached back behind his head, wincing, and flipped a toggle positioned where nothing could hit it by accident and I sighed in relief, once again able to focus._

_"It's not that I mind, it's just that I don't really want to see you explain to Dravis that the relay needs a complete firmware reload because you couldn't keep your hands off your secretary."_


	30. Three Finger Salute

Chapter 30: Three Finger Salute

"Now I like taking off, don't like burning out. Every time you turn it on, makes me want to shout."

-Boston

Once again I was sitting twiddling my thumbs while Jenny worked her mojo. Once again I was reflecting on just how lost I'd be without her, both professionally and personally. Once again I relied on her to get us out of what I'd somehow managed to get us into. Except for once I was content to sit on my hands. Eventually when you kept getting burned, you stopped reaching for things. The last time I'd ached for a little refreshing action we'd gone up against that monstrosity. I chewed on my lower lip a little, literally trying to bite back a smile, as I tried to anticipate how long it would take for my nightmares to work their way down on the list of all today's shit to accommodate something as relatively pedestrian as a plasma cloud in an unfixable arena with system-wide comms and two lives riding on my success. I figured I might unwind enough in a month to work that in.

("QX to pop the helmet and grab some water? Throat's killing me.")

I didn't mention that the everpresent faint smell of cookies was making me hungry as hell too. The steak and handfuls of corn only went so far, but with long experience I clamped down on the mental litany of all the meals I wanted to eat.

_"Want to get out and take a piss while you're at it? Keep your arms and legs inside the atmosphere at all times."_

She sounded a little irked, but it was to be expected when she was doing…whatever she was doing. It was SOME consolation that if everything did go tits up we were at least out of range and no immediate response was needed. The progress bar ticked over from seventeen to nineteen percent as I reached clumsily up and unfastened the helmet, pushing it up and off. The air in the cockpit smelled cold and dry, a relic of the Ball's hangar bay but a pleasant change from the smell of cookies and my own sweat. Hell, while I was at it…

I pulled off the gloves for good measure and tucked them into the helmet as it floated in micro-g so they didn't get lost somewhere I couldn't retrieve them from where I sat. My hair felt crusty as I ran my stubby claw-nails through it and if I didn't shave soon I was going to start looking like a mountain man and having problems with an airtight helmet seal. Kill Mercury's excavator, win a VIP shower—as a game show, it lacked a certain something, as a reward for getting back to the Ball it was a lot more desirable than the fuzzy benefits of restoring system traffic.

Warily, I extended an arm straight in front of me, palm up, and watched for tremors. I was shaking worse than I'd thought, but Jenny hadn't said anything about it. If it was at least somewhat under control—I envisioned a red hulk looming behind us suddenly and let my brain and stick hand react naturally. My uncontrolled vibrato repatterned itself into a forward porpoise to evade lock and what looked like a combined roll and pitch to bring the nose back on the imagined target faster than yaw alone would, then back into a steady minor tremble. It wasn't great but it was still purposed.

("You never told me that this was life on the front lines of tech support.")

_"Yeah, well, usually it's more like 'start it again' than 'dear god, bullets won't stop it!'."_

It was strange to hear her voice through the cockpit speakers instead of the helmet or directly via bone conduction. Rubbing at my eyes—a luxury you never really missed until you couldn't do it for most of a day—I snaked out the water tube from its position in the headrest and took a gaspingly long drink. Didn't matter that it was lukewarm because it was one of the things behind the upholstery that served as a compression barrier, didn't matter that I'd been sitting on it all day, the citrus flavor was an unexpected tongue surprise and I couldn't even remember when I'd last filled up the seat, but what mattered was that it was wet and there was enough to wet my parched throat.

"Wasn't that why we stopped going to the meat market on Goddard?"

_"What, bullets not stopping the food? That was the gang shootout you got in the middle of, and the issue was that the tuna DID stop a couple beams and a couple rounds."_

"It was frozen."

_"It was shit."_

"So it got a little blackened."

_"Better than you. How's your throat?"_

I took another long pull of water before I answered.

"A little blackened. How's your precarious enterprise?"

_"Moving like frozen shit. This concise recapitulation is kinda fun."_

"What happened to 'shut up and let Mommy ride the white tiger'?"

_"Familiarity's breeding contempt, or at least a certain degree of confidence in a self-sustaining process. We're up to somewhere about a third to a half done, or at least so the copy routine thinks. You know, nine figures might not be unreasonable. The cost of building another generator if we'd blown that as per our instructions…hell, the PR impact alone, for 'A PTMC contractor, against all odds, was able to restore functionality to systemwide communications this evening, greatly speeding up our disaster recovery efforts' news coverage, you can't buy that kind of good press."_

"You can buy us."

_"You can buy our temporary loyalty, to a point."_

"Be honest, did you see this morning's call as anything more than a good shot at cathartic smashing?"

_"…I would've jumped on just about anything for you that didn't involve disaster recovery. Something to keep us busy, and something to put some currency back into our system. The PTMC angle seemed like a godsent bonus, not another life-changing nightmare."_

I'd give her that one, and mentally I thanked providence that I was still too busy surviving to have much luxury to sink into much depression.

"Considering, we're doing well. If this works, of course, can you apply it to McQuarrie and onwards?"

She displayed a small cartoon figure of herself slowly rotating clockwise as a sort of visual busy indicator to accompany the pause.

_"Isn't it your job to handle specifics and not generalities?"_

"And aren't you getting a little specific today for a general strategist?"

I could turn that one right back around.

_"Everything's changing. It's more like 'the truth makes you flee'."_

"Always heard it as 'the truth will set your _teeth_ free.'"

She laughed at that and the progress bar hit 50% to the accompaniment of a small falsified display of balloons and fireworks. If I looked closer, the bursts were in the pattern of Pyros and hearts, and one double blue burst that looked suspiciously like a pair of familiar hooters.

_"It's weird as hell, I always thought the downtime was the boring part where I could catch up on all the prep work, but this time around whenever we can stand down and think, it's some new horrible wrinkle. Starting to understand your hunger for the chance to make some differences in the situation with simple actions."_

"And you know damn well I'm acquiring your appreciation to be able to understand the ramifications of a situation before I charge in, guns blazing. Well, if we survive this—"

_"Chances keep increasing, assuming we can survive the PTMC/UEG/citizenry backlash…"_

"—we'll have achieved some quality personal growth and development."

_"Just the thing for your troubled teen. Endanger the entire human crossplanetary economic system so they can have their little bildungsroman."_

"You don't get a syllable bonus any more than I get a kill bonus."

_"Professor Jenny has done enough lecturing today. You know she'll always welcome you 'after hours' though."_

"You've, to put it delicately, gained a few pounds since the last time we made out. I know I'm still welcome in any orifice, but the laws of physics…"

_"…and the temperature damage threshold of skin…"_

"…do kind of cockblock me a little."

What she was starting to do with her projections notwithstanding, of course, but that was, even for our usual banter, a private and intimate matter. And it just didn't seem like a good time to me.

_"Yeah, well, if we ever get to stand down and spin down and it's not in something in its own bubble, I can probably show you a few things. Until then...McQuarrie may not have enough free space to do it. This relay is kind of special. Maybe some kind of external storage attached, which would pose its own problems."_

I didn't like the idea of getting out of the cockpit in a control room and busily fastening cables and whatnot, especially if the facility design folks put the reactor within sight of the control room like they had in the Lunar facility we'd purged oh-so-long-ago by any standard but chronological, but if it was what was needed it gave me some degree of comfort to realize that Jenny would be even more pissed off at the idea than I was.

"How external?"

Bracing my fingers against the cockpit, I pushed up hard , rewarding my efforts with a fusillade of cracks and pops from my finger joints and knuckles. My left thumb ached and I couldn't place it until I realized that I'd been keeping it awfully tense over the missile trigger on the gunnery and throttle stick for an awfully long time.

"I mean, could it be done internally over a standard channel?"

The spinning Jenny paused, scratched her head at me, and reversed the direction of her spin for a moment before blinking out again.

_"I see where you're going with this. Admin stations would probably have enough space in userland to accommodate the temporary extra but the processing stations aren't likely to allocate huge chunks of storage for roughnecks and their communications or complex documents."_

At this point I wasn't sure where I was going with it, I'd thought of Jenny acting as some sort of communications conduit and she was rambling about userland and system space as if they were different.

"Not following, and more external external internal than completely internal. Why not just copy it over an external link to some OTHER storage? I get you don't want to copy anything into system memory, I really do, please don't give me that lecture again…"

_"'Mister Cosmic Ray is not our friend! He and Mister Bit do not agree!"_

"…but if we're going to outsource this back to PTMC and company then why not use a communication link to a shuttle or something?"

The 'or something' suggested things. Like the Ball or the Carrot in a pinch.

_"I…OK, you're going somewhere entirely different. It'd be slow, but it's not our time, and as long as that 'something' does NOT include me. I will not host compromised code, for reasons I hope I don't have to explain."_

"No more than I'd volunteer as a petri dish."

_"All right. IF this works…"_

It'd worked for at least seventy percent of making a retranslated copy, which wasn't too bad. One last drink and I snaked the tube back into its holder and capped it again, pulling on my gloves with a sigh.

_"…then we'll rope the __Hamster Ball__ into service. If it doesn't have the guts, we'll do it on the __Carrot__. Either way we'll have a better assessment of what it'll take for PTMC to do it on their own with this decryption stage. Yes, I put that guy's code patterns all over it to disguise it a little…"_

I wouldn't've remembered that part of my discussion with Samuel, even though I was starting to learn to juggle chainsaws like her.

"So what do we need from Valhalla, then, after we salvage McQuarrie and drop off Hannah?"

_"Assuming it all goes well. Lots of missiles to top off. If we're not bothering with recon, I can make do with homing. No need for mercury, we've got plenty of direct fire. Unless you'd like to spring for plasma…we ought to send the gun camera footage to Quentin and rent him and his crew an entire VIP bar for a night, because I think a solar-system tourist attraction ranks more of a drink than just a beer for a drone. When you get Dravis back, see if you can send armor specs out there so they can be prepping it, we need just about every panel replaced and we might as well swap the cockpit out for armor, you NEVER fly visual only any more."_

"No plasma, and no armor arguments—the only thing I want is to have the helmet as a default display device in case you're napping or there's a system fault."

It was damn unsettling to have that big melty spot just above my head if I looked up and out. I knew that if there was any kind of atmospheric integrity issue, Jenny would tell me but the paranoid hindbrain just saw the damage on the only thing between me and airless blackness and began preparing all manner of hormonal brews.

_"You mean in case something happens to me and you're stuck remembering how to operate the spaceframe manually? If anything knocks out that much of the computer system you're not going to have much by way of manual flight control unless you're in atmosphere or want to puff around with thrusters. Besides, I dread thinking what you'd do without all my little projections. Pinup photos? Glue a little sculpture on the indicator panels? Admit it, you rely on my data."_

It wasn't a pleasant thought. I'd still have my vector, because her dead-woman switch on the bubble would snap it back to spherical so it'd still act as shielding, just not propulsion. I couldn't CHANGE my vector because you couldn't manually manipulate bubble drive and live, so about all I'd be able to do was add small increments of divergent thrust or rotation via thrusters. Or live on lift and thrust if it happened in atmosphere.

"Your augments are just that good. Get what you want, we don't know how long we'll have to run. Or how far away from this system afterward, remember?"

_"Eschewing the tit joke, missiles, armor, reactor fuel, Vulcan ammo—depleted uranium or tungsten or whatever you can get—and a replacement landing skid actuator and strut. I don't know if I can lower it, if it'll hold any weight, or if I can lift it again. Or if the bottom plate will break free of being spot-welded to the armor surrounding it."_

Assuming there was air in the hangar, she could always balance on two skids and thrust and we could do a hot refueling. Not great for the bearing runtime on the fans, but better than trying to drop a side of the ship and balance on skid edges and a wingtip…last thing I wanted to do was risk damaging the laser optics.

"Hell of a shopping list. I should throw in some rations and a water refresh, squeeze some extra air into the tanks just in case. Maybe get ambitious, ask for a pair of socks and underwear that aren't soggy."

_"This is one of those times I'm glad I can't smell anything any more. Weren't we idly batting around the idea of exactly this kind of dropship logic this morning on Shiva?"_

Memories sprang fuzzily to mind and passed straight through without leaving much useful behind.

"I think the drawback was the expense, but here we are."

_"Enjoy it while it lasts. I'm hoping to call in our favor with the military to run as supercargo in some shuttle bay outsystem, but that's not OUR dropship and neither is the __Carrot__."_

"Would you just…you're overloading my burnt brain here. Tell me these things as we get to them."

I _couldn't _ hold all these things in short term memory. Everything I tried to hold down just slipped away the moment I stopped focusing on it. It was the price I paid for being a damn good combat multitasker, and most days that was fine, but today it was getting frustrating.

_"I'll have a list ready for Dravis when we get him on the horn. Way-HEY, here we go!"_

The progress bar blinked off and the little icon of Jenny cartwheeled across the screen before exploding into glitter that resolved itself into the component stars visible through the end of the hole.

"That's good, right?"

I was out of my depth still, but at least I was less sore.

_"It's copied. I just have to make a few…adjustments."_

And that phrase immediately sped up my heartbeat. I knew she probably just meant to reset things to normal, but…I fought with myself for a moment to decide if this was even something I wanted to know about.

"For my peace of mind, sensei, will you enlighten me?"

_"Calm down, it's hardly my usual bang shui. Restoring priorities to what they should be, mostly."_

"It's weasel words like that that make me fear prison and for the sanctity of my sphincter."

_"Yeah, well, in this case the pokey is pretty hokey. I just added a couple extra conditions—which you will mention to Dravis—that are completely reasonable. First, anything directed to us has a higher outbound priority to make sure it can clear the clutter when this thing goes back online, second, anything locally hailing the relay in our saboteur's language will trigger an entirely appropriate violent response. Any inbound message likewise will trip all the alarms and be quarantined for digital forensics."_

Put like that, it did seem surprisingly reasonable but I had a suspicion that she was leaving out data.

"And?"

_"And playing a little catchup with some of my little personal touches here and there by slipping a few little messages into the outbound queue that didn't originate anywhere and of which there'll be almost no traces. It's for your own good. Any Corbell that needs help..."_

I _really_ didn't want to hear her contingency plans and held up a hand hastily.

"All right, all right, tell me about it if we make it outsystem. What's next?"

_"…Not much, honestly. Storing the record of the process—well, without my personal touch—so PTMC can duplicate it. Now all I have to do is rely on the relay to stay running while I move all this crap back over and overwrite what used to be there. Then I can restart the processing end and it should load all the correct stuff."_

That sounded way too easy because I could comprehend it.

"No issues with corrupted code staying in memory?"

She spat a raspberry at me.

_"This is a simple flip and corrupt, and a little security-through-obscurity with the language. I don't think it's self-modifying. The bitbangers can come out here with logic probes and spend a few months with every circuit if they really want to, but if things go bad again now they'll know how to fix it."_

"If it works."

_"Tell me, do you worry the light switch won't flip on again after you've flipped it off?"_

"Point made. Just tell me what happens."

_"This is why I don't give you running commentary."_

"It's not the commentary that's the problem, it's the whole running part. Whether that's us or it."

_"Why don't you fill your mouth with something other than words for a minute? I swear this is almost done."_

"You swear all the time."

I muttered, but she ignored it. Lacking anything else to feasibly stretch, and being adequately hydrated for the time being I just stretched out my legs to rest my boot soles above the yaw pedals and closed my eyes, concentrating on deeper breathing to relax. It was almost as good as a nap if you could do it well enough.

_"Up up, lazybones, you're basking in subspace messages."_

I sat up with a jerk, rubbing aching eyes. I felt groggy enough to suspect I'd relaxed myself more than I thought. How long had I been out?

"What'd I miss?"

_"About ten minutes of nothing much. I had to stick my fingers in the dyke when it came back on and let the system catch up on old traffic before it started acknowledging any new stuff, but it's running without intervention."_

Crap.

"For how long?"

_"About a minute now. What, you think I'd let you sleep when you could be calling our boss?"_

"I could hope. Can you get a call through?"

_"Can I…"_

I heard an exasperated sigh and what sounded like nothing other than the tap of a high-heeled shoe on a hard floor.

_"Shiva probably has a continual timeslice open to this damn thing. I can't promise he'll answer but I can promise it'll ring through even if I have to flag it as system-priority traffic."_

"Last message that went through like that was a little too much trouble. Be a good girl and fetch the bonehead?"

_"Arf arf, dear. Stand by."_

It was without a great deal of surprise that I pulled on my helmet and saw Dravis' impassive visage in front of me. Mentally I thanked Jenny for making sure he seemed a respectable distance away and didn't appear to invade my personal space.

"Well, Material Defender? Obviously you have called to inform me that the relay is again operational; I trust you received my caution about our megaboring command station and did not unduly damage the installation."

"Everything down there went, pardon my French, absolutely apeshit! It asked me for a systems update, I didn't give it one, and it went back into intruder defense mode after I persuaded it to recognize me as PTMC authorized. It and all the little drillers and missile hulks opened fucking fire on me!"

Just thinking about it was making me mad, an anger I'd had no time for at the time.

"No thanks to your caution, I blew half of its thrusters out and the last I saw of it, something in the power distribution system went kerblooie. Stuck against a wall and starting to heat up, maybe melt down, couldn't station keep and killed itself trying!"

Dravis sighed, writing something down on a pad of paper just out of my view.

"Apparently that software was corrupt as well, then?"

"Unless you had some actionable second thoughts about that paycheck and told it to open up, _yeah_, it was corrupt."

_("Why are you giving him ideas?!")_

"Is the power installation still functional or did your response result in critical damage there as well?"

It took a moment to forcibly calm myself down. Taking his head off wouldn't take it off ENOUGH to be useful, and would probably make things even harder on us at a future point.

"As far as I can determine the only damage was minor surface damage from stray plasma and Vulcan rounds. The relay's running acceptably."

Dravis wrote something more and leaned forward, looking interested for the first time since I'd made his acquaintenance.

"A brief précis on your efforts with the relay would be most useful, as well as its theoretical applicability to other facilities."

I'll just bet it would.

"Short version—translated and copied the entire OS into buffer space, resulting in a normal if corrupted copy. After restoring priorities to normal I added two additional modules. The first triggers a response of either quarantine, if message, or direct fire, if local hail, if anything comes in with the encrypted language. Slamming the barn door on the thief, if not the horses. The second module simply adds a higher priority to any traffic you have for us to ensure we get it…in a _timely_ fashion…with the current clutter. After that, copied everything back and overwrote existing data, then restarted processing."

"And you can verify that no potential malicious code remains in the system?"

"If you recall, we were discussing the possibility I'd have to blow the entire thing up to sanitize it! I'm no code jockey, but my onboard systems report that the operating system appears to be a normal operating system."

"Noted, Mr. Corbell. I will make sure a data analysis team is dispatched to inspect and if necessary sanitize any remaining hostile elements."

_("I TOLD you they'd send out the bitbangers.")_

"More importantly, there are a number of people who are very curious as to whether this process is adaptable to other processing and administrative stations."

_("Would that include the people ON those stations, you shaved weasel?")_

I rolled my eyes to try and get her to shut up, despite the undeniable fact that my thoughts were going in the same direction.

"I will transmit a full copy of the procedure, including the encoded hail I used to clear perimeter defenses and the running translator stage as a set of files. I had in mind testing at McQuarrie, as I believe the atmospheric lab is a complete writeoff. Ideally this copy process could be performed over a communication link using surplus space in a general purpose security shuttle, if more capacity is needed I will attempt it using the…"

I sure didn't want to call it the CFO's yacht, because I had a feeling that was a bit of a sore point.

"…excess capacity aboard our piggyback courier. Due to speed requirements, I will most probably end up leaving Ms. Talbot and her security shuttle at McQuarrie, and she is current with my knowledge if you want further debriefing or assistance with any rescue operations."

Dravis frowned nonetheless. Two expressions in a single call…the man must've been powerfully relieved. That might change if he had to debrief Hamster. The thought of her volcano of profanity at dealing with the suits after what we'd done to her...well, they couldn't haul her away in irons, because they might well need to hear what she had to say. I had to put a hand over my mouth as if to rub it in thought, because nothing else would hide that few moments of grinning. Delayed blast Hamster Ball indeed.

"This must not entail copying corrupted code into PTMC vessels! I will try to ensure a crack field team is outside the McQuarrie perimeter to observe the procedure and recover local control of the facility in the event of success. What is your contingency plan if this method does not succeed?"

That was the part where we fought through hordes of shuttles with no missiles, damaged armor, and a hostile atmosphere way too close in relative terms.

"It involves disproportionate violence against PTMC security shuttles if they are operating in autonomous facility defense mode…if you make sure that field team comes in something well-armed and with bulkhead cutters, conduction megaphones, and preloaded storage arrays with an uncorrupted software version, they can probably regain control at a local level."

This time Dravis did pinch his forehead. His fingers came away white with makeup and the skin underneath looked like undercooked salmon flesh. Absently, I wondered when was the last time he'd slept.

"Let me be quite clear on this matter for ongoing documentation, Material Defender. In the event of infiltration failure, you are seriously recommending a highly visible armed assault on our own property, with a team of…of data marines…on standby?"

This I wouldn't stand for. The only thing stopping me from requisitioning Earthshakers to fill the pods and doing this the _easy_ way was some misplaced sense of compassion that put the economic survival of the species on the current scale ahead of personal survival…and more immediately, wanting to save lives on those stations because I sure as hell couldn't save them anywhere else.

"Listen, Sam, this morning you were telling me to blow the fucking reactor on anything that had been corrupted until I diverged from your plan and FOUND a way to infiltrate. I gave you the vector, the file, the method of action, I'm giving you a method of elimination that's already been partially tested and allows you to keep facilities—and minimize casualties!—and you are giving me shit. With this directive I could salvage primaries and use them on every damn thing in my way, but I'm still trying to do YOUR damage control!"

"Narrative management is an ongoing concern. If an armed assault is required, uncontrolled media exposure may be more dangerous to us and to you than you currently accept."

_("He's got a point for once.")_

I didn't want to hear any of it.

"It's not my _problem_ if the newshounds are muzzle-sniffing me, it's not my _problem_ what lies and stalls you've had to feed to the UEG to keep them out of this so far, your stock price is not my priority out here! For all you wanted St. Jon, he was flying pretty moronically, wasn't he? Reactor by reactor, nothing left of PTMC but scrap clouds in orbit and melted slag underneath, this way you get to keep some of it! I am SAVING YOUR ASS out here, at the cost of my own…"

Jenny was making frantic shushing motions at me, having finally popped up on the screen, but all the suppressed fury that I'd held back so long was boiling up and out and I couldn't do a damn thing to stop its flow any more than I could breathe vacuum.

"…I will make you look like a goddamn hero, I don't care if you keep my involvement minimized as 'an external contractor' as long as the goddamn check clears, ALL I NEED FROM YOU is to get the fucking contractual support that YOU signed off on! That patch was relayed through Shiva, but I'm relying on you to mop up on that end because I'm FUCKING TRYING to avoid doing anything fucking drastic!"

I tore off the helmet in sheer incoherent rage and straight-armed it down into the pedal box, where it did a complex carom off the angles there and came rocketing up straight at my face again. Clamping it under my arm instead of smashing it into the canopy until one of them shattered, I fought to keep my face back under control, fought to keep my lip down over my canines, fought to calm my shaking. It was a long moment before I could put it back on again, and when I did I discovered the channel was still open and I'd caught Dravis in the act of downing a shot of something clear before sweeping it out of the field of vision once he saw I was back to the call.

"Mr. Corbell, the relay must be experiencing some technical difficulties."

He said with a weary sigh.

"If there was a response to my concern about narrative management I did not receive it. A field team will be on site when you arrive. Do you have a moment to discuss facility reprioritization and current military concerns?"

I had nothing but Jenny, and nothing but time, until my damn mouth somehow managed to betray one and lose us precious periods of the other.


	31. They Don't Build Them Like That Any More

Chapter 31: They Don't Build Them Like That Any More

"Don't push me cause I'm close to the edge, I'm trying hard not to lose my head. It's like a jungle sometimes, makes me wonder how I keep from going under."

-Joseph Saddler

_There were times when I really wished that I had an override switch for my love's mouth, or was brave enough to intervene and cut the channel. But, just as how he didn't want to deal with me when I was really pissed off, the last thing I wanted to do was intervene in his venting and have him redirect the rage toward me. Especially today. I'd been a millisecond from cutting that call short, or at least muting it, from the moment he first started bristling, but had been too chickenshit to actually do anything about it. Now, well, damage control didn't really apply, god knew there was little enough to lose. It was somewhat comforting to know that Dravis had taken to drinking, it helped to make him slightly more human…or at least blackmail, if we needed to resort to it. I didn't understand how Jerome had held himself in check for that long, or how much was still boiling, but I was at least deeply glad he'd had a chance to unburden some of it. You couldn't bottle up emotions like that. High PSI created nothing more than increased lethality and turned small leaks into fatal problems._

"...The response was largely irrelevant. I'm operating on the principle that a reclaimed facility is a better investment than a destroyed one unless I explicitly hear otherwise. Please hold while I lay in a course to rendezvous with the Carrot for the McQuarrie hop and we can discuss specifics in transit."

_He held a finger up and I cut sound and picture, moving the window to a far corner of the display as he resignedly began pulling back on his gloves preparatory to resecuring himself in the seat._

"Please don't start."

_"I was just going to ask, sincerely, if you felt better."_

"Honestly? I was surprised I could stop. I'll be all right. I just wish we had the time to do a little proper emotional flying. Proper predators, you know?"

_I knew all too well. The thrill, the sense of superiority, toying with prey, hunt-and-chase-and-ambush-and-roar-and-pounce-and-kill. Not this battle against the unknown, hide-and-seek bullshit where we kept feeling like sabertooth mice. I echoed the image of an anthropomorphic man-sized sabertoothed mouse facing down a room of normal-sized cats and heard his strained half-hearted chuckle._

"Something like that, yeah. Just run us back to the Carrot, will you? I'm a little frustrated. Don't want to deal with it."

_Dravis had that effect on me as well, but like a good girl I stretched and kicked myself up and out the borehole, finally, streaking for the sky under a few hard gees for a few seconds then going ballistic to let the boy finish his little chat._

_"Live in three, two, one…"_

_This time I saw the entire bottle. It was a pretty good vodka, and it was nearly empty, and Dravis wasn't quite able to hide it away as quickly as he would no doubt have liked._

"Welcome back, Material Defender. We have a situation on Mars."

_That was a pretty little evasion. They had a fucking "situation" everywhere they had a station or a facility, except the moon and except Mercury—unless you wanted to count a progressively being ruined command station as a situation. Or a relay that would take a bunch of logic geeks several months to check out fully._

"We have a number of ongoing situations, Samuel, can you please elaborate?"

_It was still unnecessary, but at least their sniping was a little lower-energy than usual._

"Specifically, the Utopia Planetia construction yards and the UEG's military base. It appears both facilities were corrupted at approximately the same time…"

_Which was kind of a surprise. I thought da U P, eh, used almost exclusively human labor via dinky little powered pods with manipulators. Nothing finer, for what would get humanity out beyond this star, than to forgo mechanical automation. I thought the sentiment was a little silly but could understand it. Today, well, everything else was getting turned upside down and emotionally based stupidity turned out to be a pretty good idea. On large and small scales alike, come to think of it._

"….and the construction drone complement has been running amok in a fashion that seems calculated to cause maximum damage to spaceframes. There have been a number of reported regrettable incidents with manned construction pods. UEG fighters have been attempting to pot-shot drones with mixed results."

_Whoa, whoa, whoa. First of all…what the HELL was going on? How did he hear about this kind of crap? I flashed a giant stop sign over the image, blinking it for emphasis, and surrounded the border with a repeating motif of "WTF"._

"…Do we have official UEG intervention at this point?"

"Fortunately that is not the case. The UEG base is…in a problematic state of containment. Unlike the Tycho outpost, local personnel were able to maintain control. They staged an assault against their own facility defenses, and despite regrettable casualties, were able to take and hold the control room. Preliminary reports suggest that electronics techs uncovered a number of loopholes our operations departments were previously unaware of."

_Go go hackers! Great Scott, what a thing that would've been. Of course, now PTMC robotics had murdered on-duty UEG troops, and documentably. No wonder Dravis was drinking, and no wonder he never seemed too happy to hear from us. Cleaning out the warrens with a high-order reactor containment breach would erase evidence quite nicely._

"And did the reactor also vent to the military protocols I noted in the lunar facility?"

_I steadily increased acceleration to one normal internal gravity, an easy cruise. It felt good to be able to sense all the communications channels of a normal system working again, even if they were broadcasting panic and doom._

"It did, and they waited it out, and now the facility is without power, massively contaminated, and operating via a hardline from the construction yards, enough to crack sufficient air for survival. Cleanup crews are attempting to assist now but your program is the first lead we have to attempt to restore the systems to functionality."

_("Hard rads, deaths, civilian damage. Can we say legal hammer?")_

_They were in trouble deeper than we were. No wonder we'd gotten the blanket permission to scavenge tech. Compared to this, one extra slap on the wrist for improper licensing was _nothing_._

"And the UEG fighters?"

"Combat air patrol to ensure facility security. They were scrambled from the base before the troubles began and couldn't return."

_I wouldn't like to be in those pilots' boots._

"Can you please explain exactly what presence PTMC has in the construction yards?"

"We had recently implemented a pilot program of supplementing human labor with drone assistance, using a number of cutters, lifters, and internal tactical drones for perimeter security. I believe what you will be interested in is the control mechanism, and it is mobile via what we generally sell as a backup controller."

_I projected myself long enough to forehead slap at Jerome. Another one of those little fuckers, in something the size of those yards? He wanted a chase and a kill, he was about to get one._

"That explains the difficulty of the UEG fighters in eliminating it."

"Material Defender, I'm not sure they are aware they should even target it. Your operational results have been kept on a very restricted distribution list."

_Small favors, but I'd take any I could get._

"Send me the EM signature of it and I'll just hunt it down and eliminate it. Should be a great deal simpler than trying to reprogram it on the fly without a primary controller handy. Speaking of EM signatures...you may be interested to know that your little database update got broadcast out to Charon."

"…That is an utterly preposterous statement, Material Defender, and without evidence I cannot credit its veracity."

_That was my cue…I slung a copy of the decoder logic over the connection and followed it up with the copy of the encoded transmission and a copy of the decoded version. It was fun to watch his eyes bug out._

"This is…this is not my doing."

"You didn't update the internal database with who you'd interviewed and the results?"

_Hopefully Jerome would at least keep his cool this time._

"It's standard procedure to create a paper trail of communications with contractors, yes, but…"

"But nothing, Sammy, now whatever's out there knows what we sound like. And anything else that may've been listening."

_There was a long pause while Dravis studied the file at his end, occasionally tapping out a few commands that looked like he was running repeated translations on it and comparing to what he'd sent._

"Correct. If regrettable. This lends some much-needed substance to the merits of your decision to commandeer your temporary dropship…it will at least mask that signature during transit. What is your present readiness status?"

_Tired, fed up, running on empty in a number of ways…I kicked our list of demands his way and watched him read it again, smiling encouragingly at Jerome in the meantime._

"That command station and its driller complement filled the space pretty densely. Couldn't dodge them all."

Dravis raised an eyebrow, a faint spark of this morning's haughtiness returning.

"From the length of this list, it appears you couldn't dodge _at_ all. Nevertheless. You will likely not be able to find much at McQuarrie. Assuming a successful facility recovery, their infrastructure is considerably behind and their inventories likewise. I would suggest Utopia Planetia, but the UEG technically has jurisdiction. If you are able to speak with somebody with significant authority, you might suggest that the cost of any repairs could be taken from the amount they owe us for the drone program."

_In the long list of things to do, that was not high on my list. "Hi, Ms. Manager! We know PTMC's drones have been killing your people and damaging the spaceframes under construction, but if you can make up some armor really quickly, you can owe them less!" That, in my book, was a great way to be named as an additional defendant or accomplice in the inevitable massive lawsuit. Jerome must've been thinking along the same lines because he burst out laughing and shook his head as violently as the half-deflated bolsters would let him._

"Dravis, if you can arrange that, please let me know. If you can't, just pass this on to Valhalla. I can refuel and repair the skid at McQuarrie if possible, at Utopia Planetia otherwise, and stock up on simple concussion missiles wherever I can find them until I can get something better."

"Very well, Material Defender, I suppose I had no real reason to believe you would make my job any simpler. The reason I wished to discuss prioritization with you had to do with the military facilities and automated factories. If the relay technique is effective, anybody wishing to gain access to those controllers will need a high-level military identification and a current PTMC high-level maintenance access."

_You'd have to be an idiot to not see where this was going. It was going to throw us right back into the shit just when I thought we'd scraped some of it off._

_("Why not the UEG?")_

_I asked aggrievedly, even though I was expecting plenty of bullshit about fiefdoms._

"The _military_ would have a legitimate identification, and cruisers full of fighters to which you could issue the decryption procedure and a temporary maintenance identification…"

_Jerome was trying. Of course he was! If we could zorch a controller and go the fuck HOME long enough to hitch a warp run out of the system…we might survive._

"Yes, Material Defender, but there are certain…"

_Oh, this was going to be fucking genius._

"Certain, well, liability restrictions involving that sort of disclosure at this stage. It would be an implicit admission we could not resolve our internal affair."

_Their internal affair. Kerensky's blood, I wanted to go where they taught humans to lie like that._

"Didn't it cease to be an internal affair when PTMC drones and facilities caused the deaths of civilians and UEG personnel?"

_I liked it a lot better when he was sarcastic-pissed instead of shouty-pissed._

"That is a matter I think we both would prefer to be left in the capable hands of our legal team."

"Yes. I'm sure the ashes of my parents will be greatly comforted by knowing that PTMC's legal eagles are bringing their full might to bear to disclaim all responsibility! Speaking of, that patch came in via a normal system transmission, not as an outside injection. This is a long shot but is any coding of updates done via contractors or facilities on Elsie Seven?"

"How droll, Mr. Corbell, given that my files show that PTMC legal counsel recommended _against_ suing your father for his unauthorized little helper and her full access to company property…and the amount of the fines would have been roughly equivalent to the percentage on that diamond asteroid that provided your education! I will look into the coding question and hear from you _after_ your McQuarrie attempt."

_And with that the channel was cut from the other end. I could hear Jerome growl and see him bristle, so I inflated the bolsters hard, backed off, and gently reinflated them to working pressure, about the closest thing I could do to a hug or maybe a swat. Either way he took note of it._

"That…that…"

_Helpfully, I blanketed his display with every swear word in every language I had ready access to, including some in my own that was the cause of today's problems, and a handy numbered index._

"…ah….dammit…."

_You had to interrupt him early in these moods or he'd go a little nutbar with nonpositive results._

_"Call them out by number and I'll send the transmission, love."_

"Seven, a few from twenty through twenty-seven, most of the ninetys, I don't know what four-oh-two does but it looks thoroughly rude…"

_And you couldn't really concentrate on being pissed off when you were trying to swear by numbers._

"…and…fuck, and a side of fries. Chocolate malt, two straws, throw some Baileys in first."

_"Sure you don't just want the bottle of Baileys?"_

"On second thought make it a chocolate SINGLE malt."

_"You are an uncultured barbarian."_

"If that slime is an example of culture, I'll eat my own vomit and be proud of it."

_"What, you think I'm going to argue? Bending it on back to the __Carrot__. What an asshole."_

_I started building up the gravs again, because I'd rather thrust-for-brains than drift under constant speed._

_"But didn't you want to go hunting?"_

"The problem with that is what passes for atmosphere on Mars. No density, no thrust to speak of, but plenty thick enough to fuck up the bubble. Unless they've got fighters running on thrusters only, no wonder the UEG is having issues pot-shotting drones."

_"I was wondering when you'd catch that. As much fun as it would be to do ground-level skittering, we have an EM signature of the controller."_

"And a certain shortage of acceptable missiles."

_"If you fucking nuke an UEG shipyard, yes, I will be quite cross. Sure be nice to have homers, stand off from almost orbit and let it do its magic. A guided, better still, but we burned through those in homing mode a while back."_

"For a good cause."

_"Survival is always the best cause. You antisurvival nut. Any other brilliant ideas?"_

"Short of nuking Shiva? Can you lure out the controller?"

_I was able to lie to the primary controllers, so why not the secondaries? I might be able to tell It to come out to a designated set of coordinates for an update. Hey dilly dilly, come and be killed…_

_"Never tried. Certainly willing."_

_The __Carrot__ and __Ball__ began to loom small in visual range and I applied a heavy dose of braking thrust to bring us within docking distance at a sane docking speed, patching Hamster's incoming hail through as Jerome silently fought against the deacceleration._

"Jesus, boss, did you forget how to dodge? What the hell happened?"

_Jerome rolled his eyes and shot a glare to my image._

"Oh, not much, just had to take out the original big borer and its passel of groupies without actually damaging the plant…got good and bad news for you."

"If the good news is that the relay's up, the amount of crap that's now in my mail accounts IS the bad news. Been trying to catch up on that. Hit me."

_If only._

"Which would you prefer, trying to reclaim a processing station with firepower or stupid computer tricks?"

"…Depends on the firepower. If yours, computer tricks. If we can bring the UEG in, firepower all the way, as long as it's appropriately selective."

"I was _hoping_ you'd say that."

_His touch on the sticks feathered me into the cargo hold, and although I felt he was being far too nice I wasn't going to argue with the skids in unknown shape. We could see how it'd work, at least, and figure out some way to secure me before the __Carrot__ started piling on any acceleration. The nose and left skid extended as usual but the right one jammed half-way down, a sensation unpleasantly like a charlie horse I could do nothing about. I took away the controls from him with the usual ripple, perched myself lightly on the two skids—enough solid contact that the bubble was pretty much trashed for all but minor adjustments—and kept cycling the system back and forth. It hurt like a son of a bitch._

"So the good news is station reclaiming, the bad news is stupid computer tricks?"

"Stupid computer tricks using our program and your shuttle and a communications link from outside the perimeter. If a shuttle can't do it, we'll do it from the Carrot_. _The good news is that this isn't a solo op. Dravis is going to have some well-armed backup on hand for a facility assault if it comes to that, and they're going to be learning the procedure."

"…So you and I and some PTMC shock troops are going to go up against a bunch of autonomous Venus-rated shuttles if your analog assholette can't get this right? Sounds like a fucking cakewalk, how're YOU doing on ammo?"

_With an ominous motor overheating warning that I had to ignore, the leg finally came down the rest of the way and I backed off on reactor power, gingerly letting the bubble bleed away entirely. If it was reluctant to move outward, it wouldn't spontaneously collapse inward. Theoretically. I gave Jerome a high-sign with one hand and an iffy waggle with the other. At least there was nothing to go wrong with electromagnets and I mentally flipped that system on. Clamped to the deck, maybe the leg wouldn't hold weight, but at least we'd stay in place until weight came on._

"Running low on Vulcan rounds, out of missiles, need a reactor refuel. Landing strut issue…extensive armor damage."

"Your idea of good news sucks, boss. I want something else."

_The __Hamster Ball__ pogoed into the cargo bay, balancing neatly on brief thruster puffs before Hannah sucked it down the last foot or so with the much bigger magnets. Zero-gee was an entirely different environment when you weren't spoiling it with constant eyeballs-in/eyeballs-out vector changes._

"All right, how's this? You get to separate yourself from this little clusterfuck at McQuarrie. I'm going to finish the run solo, at a lot more gee than you can tolerate, because the only rescues left to worry about are the stations."

_Give her credit, she actually did shut up for a moment to ponder it. I extended familiar electronic tentacles to the systems and started the automatic seal-up routine, doors closing again and pressure starting to build in the hangar bay._

"Your good news comes with bad news of its own, doesn't it? Other than that shithole of a station that should've closed down decades ago, what's the punchline?"

"Probable administrative debrief. Maybe at Shiva."

"Oh, fuck you!"

"You weren't expecting something of the kind?"

_She'd already been debriefed by the folks at Tycho and had been suspiciously quiet about it the entire time._

"I was expecting…I don't know. A longer abduction until you had to turn me back in."

"Sorry to disappoint. If it makes you feel any better, they'll probably have you as an observer on future stations."

"It'd make me feel better to have the balls of whatever was behind this as cockpit ornaments."

"That's the general idea. Get us to McQuarrie at a sane speed, will you? And if you're going to pocket any steaks on your way through the galley, at least save me one."

"Is that a meat locker in my pants or am I just happy to see you? Yeah, thanks, I'll give you an accel warning."

_She was off the air and out of her ship, stalking purposefully toward the hatch as soon as the air pressure was survivable, before I could even pop the canopy. Jerome climbed down—giving the helmet he'd thrown a sort of apologetic sleeve-shine to try and polish away a few fresh scratches—and headed that way himself, and it was with a certain note of relief that I settled in to await being a passenger again. I hurt, dammit, and I didn't have the luxury of a soft bed and solid meat, the best I could hope for in return for my efforts was a dedicated berth and a new outfit of armor just like the old one. Granted, with fewer signs of wear, but nevertheless…I was starting to go a little crazy in bad ways. I couldn't indulge in any of my hobbies, I had no real time to unwind from all this bullshit, I couldn't even TOUCH him because we were either in a bubble or needed a bubble. And I hurt. Dammit. It was eminently logical that he had to head for a couch or the bed, to stretch out while he could, eat and piss and shit while he could, and lord knew I wanted him to, but nevertheless for him to walk away without starting to fix things _felt_ like a callous betrayal even though I _knew_ way better. _


	32. Eyeballs In

Chapter 32: Eyeballs In

"Acceleration happens when the tears of a deeply moved heart roll along horizontally towards the ears."

-Walter Rorhl

Damn if it didn't feel strange to just….dehelmet and walk away, damage not being addressed. Of course, this wasn't mission end. If only! I paused, glancing back for the first time, and had to cringe. She looked rough, like she'd lost a war singlehandedly. Every armor plate looked _chewed_ and I could tell she was tipping slightly to the side. The melted spot on the canopy was very clear from this angle, and for the first time I realized how close we'd really come.

"You know, if you'd bothered showing an armor indicator I probably would've taken us back up the borehole before that last pass."

_("You damned fool. Why do you think I didn't? Here's a cheerful thought, imagine that but without bubble shielding. The only thing that really hurts is my back and my leg. And my head. And my belly's empty.")_

And here I was, going off to recline in a comfortable couch and eat another steak or two—never knew when I'd have the chance again—and drain the lizard in relative comfort. I raised a helpless hand back toward her, stretching it out as if she'd grasp it, ancient habits that had been useless for more years than they'd been current.

"There's nothing I can do?"

_("Damned dear fool. There isn't even silverware here, what makes you think there's anything so gauche as repair facilities or a portable cutter? I hate to say it, but this is going to need to be a bath trip for you.")_

There went the idea of a nice easy run to McQuarrie.

"Oh god now what?"

_"You really want to burn a little over three days at normal weight?"_

Here we went again. The outstretched hand turned into a tired middle finger and I ducked into the hatchway between the bay and the living quarters, dogging the doors down out of another set of old lunar habits.

"I'm really starting to hate this interplanetary bullshit. There's never enough time. Give me the bad news, doc."

Jenny's image walked at my side as I made my way through the kitchen, pacing with her arms behind her back in the lab coat that I really should've expected.

_"Well, Mr. Corbell, the prognosis is a mere eleven hours. At five gravities."_

I swore, a choice number from the four-hundreds of the menu she'd displayed earlier. I must've bungled the pronunciation because she stuck out her tongue at me.

"Yeah, yeah, Mars is fucked up and those Belter factories are doing god only knows what until then. No wonder you were nattering about the bath."

_"And you need a bath anyway. I can't smell, but I know you smell."_

I could smell and I was beginning to regret it. Through the main area and back into my impromptu bedroom, Jenny keeping pace. Oh, the imaging systems were so crisp and clear…I'd miss this.

"You were the one who thought a dropship barge would be a good idea, weren't you?"

_"Let's just say I'm rethinking interplanetary work at all. Now that we've tried it and gotten forced into interstellar."_

"As long as you're doing the forcing."

I peeled my gloves off, sniffed them, and tossed them on the bed. Even my palm sweat reeked of strong emotions and, let's face it, last night's somewhat excessive drinking bleeding itself out of my system.

"Shit. I hope this place even is set up for a gee-bath."

_"What, a headrest and a slosh barrier? Or do you mean the full differential pressure facemask? I have no idea what this spaceframe is actually rated to and you have no idea of the kind of material stresses at those kinds of accelerations."_

"If I did, I'm sure I wouldn't sleep nearly as soundly. Gimme Hamster before I strip down."

_"What, you think she'd take you more or less seriously if she saw you naked and wet?"_

"She has a working nose, I assume, so less."

_"She's a working female, I assume, so it'd be a real interesting blend. Hold the line."_

A little sketch of her appeared, Jenny's shorthand for a voice-only channel, and the aggravation in her voice was fairly clear.

"Now what do you want? It takes a little time to get the course results back, considering we've got to hop over the sun again…let me guess, straight through?"

_("I'll walk, thanks.")_

("Walk back to Earth? I'll hitchhike, thanks. It may be slightly more oxygenated my way.")

"More bad news. Utopia Planitia is going pear-shaped very expensively. McQuarrie has now become a proof-of-concept speed bump."

"Jesus, Jerome, you're like a neverending fountain of shit. What major pantheon did you piss off in your last life?"

It _was_ a good question. I had Loki on my side, and could command appearances from Vulcan, but that was about it.

"Well, the drone sacrifices are at least getting me a little official intervention. From Dravis, so…not a net positive, really. Anyway, I wanted to ask you about rated acceleration."

_("Like she'll have access to that kind of data? When I don't?")_

"I know better than to assume it's an idle question. Hang on. Thought I saw the plaque here somewhere."

("There are some things that don't get digitized.")

_ ("I can't carry all of mankind's knowledge around, you know, it was hard enough getting this thing redirected in the first place. Normally I could pull it from any sorts of databases with the relay up, but you don't want to know what priorities I had to abuse to even get through with it down and with the communication situation being so…affected.")_

Jenny's response wasn't far short of acerbic and I felt the sting. A careless attempt at humor hadn't gone well, and it _was_ my fault.

("I know, sweetheart. Sorry, it was a bad joke. If I thought through things before I said or did them, I'd be you.")

_("And our relationship would be…a little strange.")_

"Whoop, here it is. Says twenty five sustained, thirty five peak. That'd be a hell of a dodge, wouldn't it?"

"I'm afraid it's going to be a hell of a run too. Can you sustain at five?"

Shocked silence, punctuated by a burst of profanity that included most of the fiftys…dammit, Jenny's little menu was mentally infectious, as she'd probably planned. And had left me with the oddest hunger for a chicken sandwich and waffle fries.

"If you can take it I can take it. What the hell, I was already gonna sue my employer for emotional distress, might as well throw in a stress-induced and gravity-exacerbated psychotic break."

_("I like the way she thinks.")_

("Then why the lions?")

_("I didn't say I liked _her_.")_

"For maximum impact I suggest you save it for the debrief. _Especially_ if it's on Shiva."

"Don't worry, boss, I won't waste my best histrionics on you…but whoever's yanking your strings…"

"I prefer 'pulling my chain'."

"…is more than fair game. I'll get it laid in and cue the sequence to a voice command. Are you seriously planning to do this the entire distance outsystem?"

Like a good subordinate I looked over to Jenny, raising an eyebrow. She nodded, tenting her hands in front of her in apology and ducking her head.

"If I can hack it. All right, let me know when you're ready and I'll head that way. Bake in about a twenty minute break at the midpoint flip and we'll denude that locker of more steaks by way of lunch."

"Wearing something this time, and all right. Until then I'll start the run at one internal, so get ready to feel the floor properly."

The connection was unceremoniously broken and I began stripping once more as my weight came slowly back to me. It seemed like it wasn't that long ago that I'd put everything back on. Jenny faded in a beach at sunset all around me, and I could even feel the breeze and hear the intermittent roar of the ocean. The only thing that spoiled the illusion—and that of the familiar young woman looking me over from behind oversized sunglasses—was the normal texture of the floor once I got my boots off again. There was something to be said for the miscellaneously pebbled texture, though…it could be imagined to feel like just about anything if you tried.

"Feel like I should have a swimsuit. You serious about this run?"

The young woman nodded, standing gracefully from the beach chair and limping my way. As she neared I couldn't not notice the all-over sunburn.

_"Afraid so. Your swimsuit's going to be another G-suit. My bolsters do a pretty good job at squeezing along with your muscles so you don't red or black out, and I DO pulse your oxygen supply pressure, but I was never seriously intended for real interplanetary work in a time-critical sense. It's all atmospheric crap for dogfighting. Nobody actually runs like this! You're probably setting all kinds of records."_

Why did it not make things better to think I was pioneering shit tolerances?

"Yeah yeah, maybe two sustained or three for the masochists, and unmanned stuff as high as the spaceframe and package can handle, and resigned to slowboating. This is…"

We'd been over it so many times, what was the point? Mutely, I shrugged and stripped off my jumpsuit and underwear, folding them into a neat bedside bundle by long habit.

_"Love, the only way to get there faster is via hitchhiking in an UEG fighter bay. And, through no fault of ours, that option's out."_

"I know, I know. It just chafes my cheeks to think that we're getting there ahead of backup, but also too late to stop any plans or save any people."

_"For now, why don't you take a real bath first, then deal with the insert?"_

I shook my head at that, blew a kiss to my swimsuited darling, and plodded into the bathroom. Unsurprisingly, it was matte white everywhere, gradually fading back to the beach once more as Jenny worked her mojo. The black tub insert hung on what looked like a palm tree, and I could only assume that the inviting tidewater pool before me was the actual bathtub. My priorities were a little different, though, and it wasn't until I outright grabbed myself and turned a full circle that Jenny hastily let the commode show in its original color.

_"All right, all right, if you're gonna piss all over a floor at least make it Dravis' carpet!"_

"Don't see the problem. I'd piss on a beach, I'd piss in the ocean…on a tree, straight up to establish distance records…"

_"Men! I hope you at least tilted your head back when you were imitating a fountain. If you didn't, don't tell me about it, considering I still try to kiss you from time to time."_

"And I hardly complain about the smell of ozone on your breath, I call that unfair."

She tried to hide the sound of the flush with a big wave, and it was somewhat surprising how well she succeeded until the smell of hot water overlaid itself on the nasal saltscape…when had that even started?...to tell me the bath was starting to fill. I climbed into the tide pool and stretched out full length, feeling the hot water cascade over me with an intense pleasure only available to the truly filthy. I was going to come out of this looking like a lobster but didn't much care.

_"Just for that you're going to smell like a blue-collar pineapple for the rest of the day."_

Something liquid splattered on my head from a height…glancing up I saw Jenny's animation of a flock of circling seagulls and grimaced…and I scrubbed it through my hair without a second thought. I slid down in the tub to rinse it off, closing my eyes and listening to the basso profundo roar of the water thundering down to raise the level. At that point I think I would've cheerfully lathered up with gear oil if it meant getting to spend a few more precious moments in the heat.

"Give me more of that, I think there's enough caked pheromones on me that I qualify as a violation of the Geneva treaties."

_"With or without seagulls?"_

"If you can think of a way to administer it that doesn't involve any sort of bodily excretions, I'm game."

_"Aw, nuts. Here I was thinking of a Chippendale's line, tastefully nude, around you and their synchronized…"_

I held up a hand then and there, hastily, although I was already thinking it. No doubt as she'd planned.

"There is not enough water on Europa to wash that idea away."

_"I suppose I can't fault you for having imprinted early."_

With a far-off peal of thunder the weather changed in a few seconds, clouds rolling in and a stiff cool wind blowing. As the rain began to fall I smelled the drops as they plashed little concentric circles in my bathwater—more cleansing agents. I began to scrub myself as well as I could with only my hands.

"Admit it, this is giving you ideas."

_"And has already taught me a couple tricks. The hardware wouldn't be that expensive. I may be able to wangle something in the Belt."_

"But we're broke!"

_"Silly boy. Plenty of information to trade. Some even legal. Worst-case, net thirty on our empty business account."_

I grinned to myself, lifting one leg out of the water at a time as the soap shower turned to straight water. The cool drops felt fantastic by contrast against hot skin fresh from hot water, and Jenny kept the water roaring in and the drain open. Somewhere, my filth was being processed out and the water regenerated and it was odd to contemplate PTMC's CFO paying for my contribution to his waste tanks to be emptied out.

"Take no baggage, you said. Travel light, you said. Speaking of, if we can salvage the useful stuff from home…"

_"Way ahead of you. Got a moving company sending it via high boost to a little dropoff I have in the Belt. Packed the little mementos, some specialty tools and armor jigs. Maybe a cubic yard of stuff. As for the hardware, an emitter upgrade would fit in a suitcase. There's even room for it in the watermelon seat. Couple boxes of parts, nothing big. And, uh, our folks' accounts are taken care of. We'll cash in for discount rates on precious metal ingots belt-side, that should travel pretty well."_

I was stuck wondering about the cubic yard part and where that would go and just how I'd gotten so much lint between my toes when the last part sank in. It was one of those moments when you teetered between anger and relief, and I fell on the side of relief…perhaps aided by hot water.

"Storage is your problem, I'll put it where you tell me to. And. Well. Thank you. First thing we do when we get wherever, I think, is have that barbeque."

Talk about overdue ideas. The water wasn't running grey but it amused me to think that it was as I finished scrubbing myself. Eyes closed, I sank back one last time, taking a lingering long moment to appreciate the immersion in normal gravity, before holding up a palm to the watcher in the sky and standing up.

"Much as I'd love to bask in that all day…"

Obligingly she faded out the illusion piece by piece, until finally I was left standing in an incongruous tide pool that turned itself back into a bathtub.

_"I like this. It's like a private luxury liner. All the best for those wasteful in-person meetings."_

"And at least a suit for the high-speed betweens."

Fitting actions to words, I stepped out of the tub and pulled the black rubberized _thing_ down from the wall, letting it trail its air supply connection and being careful not to step on it. Supply and drain hoses attached easily enough and I slung it with a wet thump into the few inches of water still remaining in the tub.

"No monitoring hookups?"

_"On-board telemetry. I can override the pulsing if you'd prefer but it's going to be with the back of my mind, I've got enough shit to think about to really want to stay alert for eleven hours without you to talk to. Assuming you're going to try to get more sleep."_

Trusting my life to PTMC hardware versus trusting my life to Jenny. I supposed I was doing the first by even pushing this transport to its rated limits, and it wasn't like the CFO's yacht was going to be underbuilt to the standards of Dad's old mining ship, but…

"Never know when you'll get the chance again. I trust the back of your mind more than the front of any PTMC owned system. Especially today."

A display of Jenny dragging a beach chair faded back in, stopping when she was as close as the bathroom's wall would let her project the image. She reclined back on it, raising a snifter of something brightly-colored with a surface enough covered by fruit bits to suggest a major shipping lane.

_"Not like I've got much better to do, right?"_

Climbing into the suit was a pain in the ass. Wet rubberized fabric always seemed to drag across every body hair I had, pulling them unpleasantly, and the air mask smelt like bad curry. I dragged it off, making a face, and swished it in the leftover water. Jenny obligingly bubbled air through it so I didn't backfill the lines with water and drown myself for the sake of hygiene, but when I put it back on again it just smelled faintly like the soap and like my sweat.

"You wouldn't like this part."

_"Just because the helmet is less intrusive? Could be worse, you're taking a midpoint break after just a few hours to eat and piss. Catheters, extraction tubes…"_

She made a hand motion with unpleasant implications and smirked. I wasn't so sure it was funny at all, considering.

"How long from Venus to Mars again?"

Water rushed into the suit and through the bypass taps as I stretched the extra fabric to the attachment points across the top of the tub. It wasn't as good as a dedicated tank with a four-way seal, but…it'd prevent too much sloshing under vector changes. I was glad for her suggestion of a bath, it'd been refreshing and a filthy direct-contact water suit was one of those peculiar hells that only the interplanetary gee-junkies ever had to deal with.

_"…Long enough that we really should talk about keeping you sedated."_

Now why was that less than encouraging? Still, if I had to spend most of a day under that load…well, waking up wouldn't be a lot of fun, with something over my face, something surrounding my body, and full of tubes and aftereffects from the drugs, but it beat the HELL out of doing it while awake.

"With the relay working, there's really no local forces for this?"

The torrent shut off and I wiggled experimentally. I could still move everything, but I felt quite well cushioned. As long as you didn't start getting claustrophobic there was nothing _wrong_ with a direct-contact suit and I practically lived in Jenny's cockpit anyway.

_"If you're lucky, local forces will be pot-shotting any hostiles that swarm up and out. If you're not, local forces will be long gone and we'll get to take on the entire warren. And holding orbits full of wee dronish devils."_

"If I were lucky, we'd have that paycheck and none of what earned it or made it necessary and be talking with Mom and Dad about what small asteroid to buy and terraform.."

_"If you weren't lucky AND good, we'd both be dead—this time for keepsies."_

"I'll take what I can get."

_"Including my modus operandi."_

"Don't you talk to me about randy, you were the one who didn't want a bubble inside a bubble."

Falling into the familiar banter was almost as good as slipping into the bath again, except the sensation lasted longer. Like a couple of gears we'd smoothed each others' rough spots and worn down to each others' shapes.

_"Yeah, well, if you really want to try firing your Vulcan inside my bubble, we'll set aside a time and a place. Preferably near an ER in case something goes wrong. …And there's anything left to sew back on."_

"Whenever you think you've got fine enough control. Just remember, you burn it, you bought it. Gimme Hamster, please?"

_"Not sure if that'd count as a fire sale…scratch and dent? Discontinued? Old inventory? In three, two…"_

The final number was a finger in the air and Jenny's image held up an audio window—displaying the waveform of me clearing my throat as I made sure the channel was live—as she sipped her drink leisurely in the background

"What? Out of bubble bath? No rubber ducks?"

Hamster's perpetual irritation was crystal clear, as to be expected over a local channel. I guessed I HAD taken a little more time than anticipated.

"Yes, I put off Dravis' demands for a few minutes because I actually WAS busy washing my hair."

"So now that you're kicking me off this little displeasure cruise, NOW you observe proper hygiene? Nevermind, let's just get this over with. Any objections?"

Oh boy was _that_ an open-ended question.

"None that'll make a damned bit of difference. Hit it."

The window vanished as promptly as it had appeared and Jenny shrugged at me. I felt the acceleration, muted by the bath and the suit, and put on the air mask.

_*Hope like hell you're tired.*_

The transition made me jump, but her voice coming through my mind instead of my bones felt like a warmer caress than the water.

"Hope like hell I can persuade myself."


	33. The Hell of the Ball

Chapter 33: The Hell of the Ball

"I work for a living, someplace they don't call me sir. I spent my whole life gambling for nothing much in return…but scars and burns!"

- Joel & Ryan O'Keefe

_Have you ever tried to sleep with a charlie horse? I couldn't manage it—yet—and so I stayed alert despite my better judgment and personal wishes. The Carrot slipped effortlessly through space on a neat parabolic curve toward where McQuarrie was going to be. Hannah was cutting it close to shave time, which I thoroughly approved of, although we'd be passing uncomfortably close to the Sun for my paranoia. A stray flare or sunspot, something to locally overload the shielding…well, it'd be quick. As for me, while we gathered speed and weight, I was trying to find a way to countermand the persistent irritation from the landing strut. I knew it had failed but I didn't know if it would hold up under five times nominal loading. This was NOT something we built out against when it came to hardening the spaceframe and it stung like a bitch. Jerome's vitals were strong and steady and I tasked a particular part of my mind to listen for his breathing and adjust my kneading accordingly to that and the sensors in the suit._

_*Doing OK in there?*_

_The reply was a little labored._

"Why don't you come in with me and find out?"

_*Because if you can even find a bathtub big enough for my metal ass, getting me dry again will be a really expensive endeavor? Shut up, dear, and keep that blood where it belongs.*_

_Projecting the bubble into liquid…well, you'd need a way bigger plant to do it. It might be possible in theory but as long as we had to pay the power bills it was off the table._

"My blood _is _in the big head, thanks. Rubber suits and a constant beating are not my kink. Take some downtime, I'm going to go shallow breathing and let myself fade here."

_*See you on the other side, sweetheart. Dream of a successful takeover and everything to be handled at the shipyard by the time we get there.*_

_I did my best to brush across his mind with an affectionate touch, with no real way of knowing if it succeeded beyond the smile on his face as his eyes closed and his breathing deliberately slowed. At least I could once again try to get relevant intel. The relay was working hard enough that I could imagine any moving parts smoking but with our priority access I could get a slow stream of data through. Oddly, the current crew complement of McQuarrie was locked down to even our directive via the standard public-facing private-login PTMC reference system. It seemed an awfully strange thing to lock away and I wasn't going to ask as Tawny because that'd just be asking for trouble and let whatever security gatekeepers know that I had those codes handy too. Instead, I changed direction if not tactics and went in directly through the internal HR database at Shiva, looking for anybody currently assigned to McQuarrie. That turned up a big fat nothing, and the mystery was starting to grow intriguing. A quick rifle through the files for anybody assigned to Shiva—to make sure I was still getting data- and everybody showed up. Likewise for the lunar processing station. H. Talbot showed up as 'nominally assigned to detached duty with external contractor MD-1032", proving PTMC crossed all the i-s and dotted all the t-s…but there were no listings for McQuarrie. A scant few for Valhalla Station and a couple listed as manning mass driver relays in the Belt, as well as a scattering of twos and threes responsible for Belt factories—I noted those locations for later. Useless. You'd expect a lack of data on any facility PTMC regarded as sensitive but conspicuous gaps only seemed to draw attention to the omission. Then again they were also logging all my accesses, so my inquiries were easily enough traceable and correctable if needed. _

_Supplies databases would give me a better idea—people had to EAT, you weren't going to get great hydroponic yields in Venusian orbit unless you had a ridiculous amount of unallocated space—but it looked like most supply runs were outsourced. I ran across a name that looked familiar in the database, something about vendor selection for the Belt outposts, and it took me a long moment to reinterpret L. Boyington into 'Linda B' from when I was back in the hangars in Shiva. Small world! Some of those places looked like they only got supplies for the crew delivered once every year…that was a long time to go without seeing anybody different. Of course they'd run the freighters with raw materials or finished products out as needed, but humans were an annoying afterthought._

_The _problem _was that no deliveries were listed as scheduled to McQuarrie. Whatever was going on there was happening to a facility that PTMC wanted to keep off the grid enough that they were delivering supplies via internal logistics routes and keeping assignments to it off the official database…or at least well hidden. For all I knew, the comment of "See M. Watanabe" in several files could be code for "working at sooper sekrit base". Jerome was in the database, as "See S. Dravis" and no location on record so it was plausible until a little further digging turned up that M. Watanabe was one of PTMC's legal eagles. Dead end or deadbeats, either way the number of people with a contact person listed was in the thousands and while I had the time to sort through, I didn't see how it would much help. Something funny was going on out there and I couldn't even get a straight answer on what the deck plans looked like to McQuarrie, everything was footnoted that a renovation was completed by contractors not long after the station was opened and that no updated plans were available._

_But the station opened seventeen years ago!_

_I didn't like blind spots, especially when they were staring me in the face. So to speak. I temporarily locked out all my hardware inputs with a lengthy mental sentence—something anatomically improbable—and stood my projected image up and paced back and forth along the beach. It wasn't nearly as satisfying as actually flexing the control surfaces would have been but we all made sacrifices under this kind of constant strain. I couldn't risk damaging an actuator or finding something that might have been damaged in the plaz-spaz room and only now fail under high-g loading. If I could even get the name of the contractor, I'd be in business, but…_

_Going up against people who knew what they were doing was frustrating. I was so spoiled by being able to find all the clever ways around, or exploit authentication loopholes, that actually being up against a proper defense in depth—logged, too—was oddly infuriating. Whatever I did would have to be justified by Jerome and he had enough 'splainin to do that I had to reluctantly drop the inquiry threads and let the connection close. I'd learned nothing, only that I needed to be more concerned than I already was. Story of this mission. At least there was one remaining thing I could do…I requisitioned a copy of PTMC's security shuttle sensor software and complete hardware schematics and part numbers then bounced it all back down to the Io Institute's systems. I needed all that crap translated and a patch spat out that would give my own—different—sensor package the same resolution discrimination for various rocks and various lifesigns. In case there were any remaining. I attached a copy of the PTMC directive and a quick note from Jerome to the effect that he was on the job and needed this /yesterday/. And, because nothing happened for nothing, no matter how many favors may've been owed, a brief note that this might be crucial for mission success and regardless, he'd endow a scholarship or two from the paycheck. Hell, half of those nine theoretical figures were mine to spend, and if we were blown into contiguous atoms in the process of attempting to acquire them at least the Institute would have our photos and bios still somewhere in their hallowed halls. Even if we got run out of town on the proverbial rail it would give Io some ammo with which to go after PTMC…and that was a fight I'd be sorry to miss._

_Still couldn't sleep. Dammit, I was still thinking enough human to frustrate myself. I could put myself in an enforced shutdown and it'd stick until whenever I set the timer for, but just like any petulant child or irascible teen, even though I was bone-weary in the heart if not the body—OK, perhaps more than I wanted to acknowledge in the body as well—I just couldn't persuade myself that when I woke up anything would be better. Put in that light, it made sense to stay up. It minimzed disaster and I'd spent all goddamn day dancing on razor edges. Which, at my weight, made a mess of my feet. Which brought me back to the damned strut ache._

_This was getting nowhere._

_Why would PTMC want to keep a facility off the books, anyway? Come to think of it, why did they need McQuarrie in the first place? What good was an orbital processing station when all you were processing was a nickel-iron mine? MN0101 was an early serial number and itself made very little sense. While I grant that no company or person had a monopoly on idiocy, something about the logistics of 'let's mine nickel iron on VENUS" didn't quite hold up. The atmosphere lab, that made sense. Second only in corrosive vitriol to your average talk show, I could see uses for studying the stuff. I could see uses for _bottling _the stuff but that was the way to either wind up a comic book supervillain or a specialty chemical supply house and I had the time for neither. Nickel iron…you could get that anywhere with a lot less effort than fighting your way through winds and acid and heat. Something they didn't want the outside world seeing, which suggested illegal and trade secret to me in precisely that order…but I was a nasty bitch. Trade secret was hard to justify. The original manifest from Dravis outright listed facilities that I was itching to pillage for data or hardware. A couple of entries for orbits of asteroids marked as 'secret base', 'military base', 'drone R&D'...Well, OK, that one I was itching to nuke from another orbit. But how could you look at things like "Laboratory (secret)", "Weapons Research", "High Velocity Weapons Research", "Proving Grounds", and my favorite "Data Retention Center" and not get the warm fuzzies at the thought of stuffing your pockets with delicious terabytes of digital goodies? All the tastier for being resellable!_

_So what the hell was missing? What wouldn't PTMC want to acknowledge? Maybe a hundred or so facilities across the solar system, and some really outsystem stuff that I hoped we'd get sent to handle, and they'd called out their sooper sekrit weapons and general labs. That left wetware. What would you do with people that you wouldn't want to even tell contractors about? What was worse than a mining company that did weapons R&D?_

_Oh shit. Wetware R&D. No, no, that was an absolutely insane idea. Why would they need to experiment on people? They surely had enough data from the Bad Old Days, from hospitals across the system, all the ways roughnecks could hurt themselves. You'd need to house them—in a nickel-iron mine, say, or a no-data-available processing station. You'd need to feed them—with internal off-the-contractor-books deliveries, say. You'd need to make sure they couldn't escape-with a standard complement of hardened security shuttles, say, and an atmosphere that was the most toxic fart ol' Sol had managed to cook up for its rocky and gassy kids._

…_What _did _happen to all those unionizers, hard cases, vocal and charismatic dissidents, protesters, whistle-blowers, all the people PTMC didn't like on an institutional level? Why was Dravis so concerned about media impacts for either a heroic reclamation or a glorious firefight? The only thing that made sense was that the place was some kind of corporate prison. It was a damn good place for it too. There were ten million ways I could sneakily pull somebody off, say, Oberon, but Venus was pretty close to home. Traffic could be monitored more closely. With a mental wiggle of my fingers I dove into crew manifests for MN0101. Jerome was clearly just looking for hostage counts….but I found the same suspicious lack of data that characterized McQuarrie. A mine listed as inactive and on standby, an ore processing station that didn't have staff or process ore…and an atmosphere lab that gave an excuse for periodic shuttle flights into the atmosphere, judging from the maintenance logs submitted for the shuttles assigned to McQuarrie. They had to have pilots…they had to have mechanics…but none of the names would cross-reference. It made sense, dammit. The escape risks in the mine. Even if they got out, there was nowhere to go except to hijack a shuttle. I'd bet that the station was the administrative part of the prison and held the low-risk folks. What would we find there?_

_After this long…we'd find _trouble_. Who knew what the primary directive in the big iron of the controller would be? Keep the prisoners contained? Keep the air in? Flip either of those and you got problems. The same kind of problem that the mine would have, but that was a presolved problem. A few remnants of organic hydrocarbons and some bored out passages. You wouldn't even have skeletons survive. It was a damned tidy little cleanup, wasn't it? I'd still have to scan, if I could get any worthwhile return through the atmosphere. _

_Back to square one. We'd be there as bystanders if all went well. If all went poorly, we'd be there as bystanders anyway. For once Jerome could keep his dick out of the meatgrinder. If the entire shuttle complement of a corporate prison went nuts…I wouldn't get in a furball like that even with full armor and ammo unless they turned on each other too. Odds were slim. The only real threat was proliferation and that was debatable and I'd rather debate it with the boy. I kept chasing this around and around in tighter circles until it felt like I was biting myself in the ass but I couldn't see the angle whereby we'd have to get involved. Call it a rest stop…such as it was. Utopia Planetia would be our real stopover. I needed armor, fuel, ammo, missiles, repairs, sensor packages, three dozen eggs and so forth. Jerome needed…well, needed some high-dollar therapy if I was being honest with myself, and a lot of chiropractic assistance as the cherry on top of the squashed-flat high-gee sundae. He was operating within normal parameters which was about all that could be said of me. We'd both taken a lot of body blows to our pysches and were still mostly standing for what it was worth. Only to throw ourselves into the next nightmare._

_But even that analysis was tail-chasing and so annoyingly familiar. Well, there was at least one thing I could do to occupy the time. I uttered the phrase to unlock my shipbody and after a very careful and very painful wiggle, shut down the alert systems for internal damage. I KNEW the leg was fucked up and unless I wanted to wake back up to ten million reminders every polling interval—nothing quite like that to pollute your automatic journal of what's been going on—something had to be killed. I didn't like to rearrange my own data but reorganizing the physical storage of the bits of me that were me would mean they were faster to load, faster to read, faster to respond. Problem is, I couldn't exactly be even slumbering in the background for it to work. I _hated _it, it was like going under a general anesthetic at the hands of your friendly groundcar mechanic. The sort of operation where you had no real guarantee of waking up…where one power hiccup could wipe me entirely out of existence. But I had no reason to believe that power delivery was problematic and it would make me a little quicker on the draw. And, fundamentally, either I got my ass out of this entirely or I came back into the game a little quicker on my mental feet. Either way. Mental checklist. Blackmail, sorted and stored. Little Corbell care packages across the system, location hardcopy under the pilot's seat, sorted and strewn. Potential last words containing affection, sordid and said. Next of kin placated? There was the tricky one. Genetically speaking my next of kin were being solidly fucked up but I was a gleeful participant in that one. Mold _this _girl into a perfect little infiltrator, would they? Raise me to a set of lies? Sod that. I'd ram those mega missiles, nuclear prohibitions aside, right down their throats if I could find a throat big enough to justify the ordinance. By relationship my next of kin would be Raspberry and Thomas but they were…slightly beyond reaching, despite my speculation on the probable satisfaction level of them with their son's demonstrated moral fiber. If you took next of kin in the other direction, well, there weren't any young Corbells running around out of Jerome's loins that I knew of, which meant that my next of kin were in his balls. I hadn't been able to directly placate _those _for some time but if we got through this alive I had some ideas that the projection systems on the Ball might be of some assistance with. _

_I set an alarm to wake Jerome up at midpoint and programmed the galley to turn the stove on when sensors detected somebody headed back there. A few tweaks to my projected image and my beach figure was sprawled over her chaise lounge with an arm and foot trailing in the sand, head back, faint layer of snoring in the audio mix and "OUT TO BRAIN, BACK SOON" scrawled in the sand where he could read it and for good measure a heart._

_You didn't survive this long without being paranoid. It might be every bit as sensible as making out a last will for a tooth extraction but…you didn't survive this long without a real damn good idea of what could and did go wrong._

_With one last integrity check and a mutter of 'screwit' to myself I kicked off the reorganization routine on a five second timer and quietly shut myself down. There had to be a better way to get the effects of coffee._

_*DISCONTINUITY*_

_Electromagnetic monitor active. Error. Excessive amplitudes detected across defined communication frequency ranges. Data streams parallelized and routed to internal monitoring system. Match active in spectrum range parameter three, "label: audio". High amplitude detected in frequency modulated from ninety-seven to one hundred twenty hertz. Volatile memory instructions require comparison against traditional storage at specified pointer references. Conditional tests matched, executing jump instruction for interpreter. Interrupt control initialized, routed to interpreter layer. Run level five achieved._

…_.whufflegrbleWHATTHEHELL damn but that was a hell of a way to wake up. I felt like I'd been given a bar of caffeinated soap and stood up in front of a firehose. Jerome was in the closed cockpit, helmet and gloves off, doing _something _under the right side of the console. I'd heard him repeating our emergency phrase…several times, glancing back over the logs._

"_Jesus, I'm up, I'm up, what the hell is going on?!"_

_I didn't have the TIME for mind contact, I still felt like every hair was standing on end and I was more electrified than usual. My engines were hot and the reactor was ticking over at a fair baseline of about a quarter full power. Around us I could see the Carrot's bay doors hanging open and the Hamster Ball was outside. Some kind of super-powerful emitter was blanketing the comm spectrum except for one very narrow standard PTMC communication channel. Had I been out the entire time?_

_Jerome straightened up with a start, the bitter snarl fading from his face to be replaced with a relieved grin._

"Everything OK? You've been gone through the entire turnover and decal!"

_Everything was…yes, everything was OK. Every thought had a little scalpel edge to it. I felt dangerous, I felt eager, I felt fast. If it weren't for the fact that my internal readouts still covered the spaceframe in armor damage flags so thick that the net effect looked like somebody'd rolled me in breading, I'd feel like tackling the world. More._

"_I'm back, I'm here. I did a data consolidation and I guess it took a lot longer than I'd planned. Sorry if I had you worried, darling…"_

_Genuine contrition was pretty rare for me most days but the usual recent exceptions applied. I _did _have those big PTMC databases open in temporary memory—on my desk, as it were—when I shut down. No wonder it'd taken a while to reorganize me! _

"A little. OK, a lot. I couldn't let you sit and sort any longer, I'm sorry. Hamster's got the Ball beaming the decode at McQuarrie by my orders and I already talked to the security squad."

_The what and the what? I'd been out for WAY too much of this. Reflexively I reached into the Carrot's logs and opened up the communication records then paused. This was going to be time-sensitive as anything._

"_I'm thinking plenty quick, boss-man. Give me the précis."_

_Jerome frowned again, covering up the access panel and dogging it down properly before he put back on his gloves and slipped on the helmet. Once he sat back I slammed the restraints into place—hard enough for him to feel that I'd taken over again—and echoed the usual full-external view with my shipbody erased and my projection looking rather quizzical off to one side. This time I had the jumpsuit on because we were still in business and still in the game._

"There's not much to tell. Dravis really pulled out the stops, there's ten good-sized transports out there doing crowd control."

_It was the _little _important things! I cast out to make sense of what I could see and hear, but what I could see and hear was just as overwhelming as being pinned in the center of ten spotlights._

"_I can't pick up SHIT on anything other than visual sensors and of course hearing you, they've all got active jammers running. I see Hamster and that's about it, the only blank spot is the channel to McQuarrie. I'm blind here, talk to me…"_

_For once I didn't have the data and had to rely on interpretations from the boy—who I knew didn't have the gift of analysis. Every mental process, sharp and clear as a glass scalpel, with nothing to use it on._

"The 'data marines' that Dravis sent? I had them go active on the jammers until we figure out if this works. We don't want the newsies getting anything through to McQuarrie…or anything back out of it. "

…_.It was the _big _important things!_

"_What fucking newsies?! Will you please tell me, in order of importance, what's going on?!"_

_I wailed in protest. I couldn't dig my feet in and get to work if I was trying to RUN on the glass! Jerome splayed his fingers up off the sticks, the best he could do while held down to extend open palms in a gesture of surrender. _

"Hannah's decrypting McQuarrie. We have plenty of backup if it doesn't work. For some reason there's quite a few fast news ships here. They were here when we got here but the perimeter was secured. Now that the relay is up, there's been some intensive runs for local PTMC facility investigation and coverage…apparently word is starting to leak out."

_Three guesses who's responsible for that, I thought sourly. Fucking Dravis, leaking our signature. Or something with the Erg Gnomic and a leak in debriefing. The reporters were like cockroaches. Every time you thought you had an operation sewed up, they'd find a smaller crack and slip in._

"_As long as we don't have to make an attack run in front of the cameras of the world."_

"Think of what it would do for publicity!"

"_I'm thinking of what it'd do to our survivability. We can't even outrun lightspeed, or radio, and we sure as hellfire can't outrun subspace communications."_

_I projected my arms crossed and tapping a foot, firing-squad-style blindfold over my eyes and a cigarette appearing in my mouth._

"As much as the idea of leaning against a nice sunny wall for a bit would feel _good_ right now, you're being melodramatic again."

"_And you're not thinking about the consequences again!"_

"At least we're not _involved_ this time! "

"_Like balls we're not, we're the backup and the translation routine is fucking stupid, it doesn't UNDERSTAND…it just parrots."_

"….Look, if it goes wrong, we'll step in. Worst case, those data marines have to fight off some shuttles and save the admin staff."

_Oh yeah. I was going to tell him at the midpoint if I felt ambitious, or on final decel if I was feeling postponeish. I couldn't postpone much, I felt full of fizz and pep and as glad as I was to be out of the way of this particular shitstorm, there was a certain girlish coltish show-off instinct that made me want to run a few high-speed perimeter passes in front of the newsies and give them a side story, but that would mean too many prying fingers into our background. Considered coldly, there would be worse things than giving Jerome a little exposure out there. Harder to disappear him—and if we did get backstabbed a previously friendly portrayal would raise enough eyebrows in the right places that—if I survived!—a good data dump ought to shake the pillars of heaven. Contingencies, ticking over like a fine watch movement. Oh yeah, I felt good._

"_About that admin staff. I lay you ten to one that place and MN0012 are PTMC's corporate prisons. There's plenty of shit that doesn't line up and that I wasn't able to untangle. Who're the goons? Internal, contractors?"_

_Jerome looked nonplussed and lowered his eyebrows, a sort of visual headshake. We had our little shortcuts. I let him up, deflating the bolsters as there didn't seem to be an immediate need for action, and chopped power back to idle to save the deuterium._

"Not betting against you. Dammit…always figured they had it somewhere, but this is closer than I'd thought. I can see why though. Wonder if Dad knew about it."

_A cough and a shrug._

"Time to be haunted by the past once the present is safely taken care of. They claimed to be from Tethys Tactical but"

_Couldn't let him finish. I was madly cogitating._

"_What, Bruce's outfit? Bruce, who still keeps sending you an offer letter every year at Christmas? Hell, we _drink _with Tethys Tactical. I do not buy for one goddamn minute that Bruce sent his minions this far insystem with all the shit that's been going on. We'll probably find them forted up around all the outsystem private concerns if anybody out there has any brains left."_

"…but, as I was saying, unless Bruce just landed a bigger contract than us, those transports look an awful lot like the latest model of PTMC assault shuttle."

_Knew it!_

"_I'll run the hull numbers while I'm waiting."_

"Why bother? They're the right pattern but numbered way below what Bruce uses. Either PTMC bought temporary rights to his registrations or he's gonna be on the pleasant end of a lawsuit against them. Either way I put a start tag on the initial scan records so we can find it later."

"_Well, at least one of us has been earning their keep lately..."_

_Despite recent history it still felt weird to have him poking into my end of things…hah, so to speak. I felt guilty as anything that I'd been out of it for so long. To have missed the midpoint, to have missed the decel, to have missed my chance to break it to him a little more gently._

"I've been sleeping for a lot of these runs…you needed the downtime too, sweetheart. You're back to being properly prickly again, just point those pricks outward."

_I couldn't help the image. Me as an anthropomorphic hedgehog girl, covered in suspiciously penile spines. So naturally I echoed it to the helmet and was rewarded with a proper spit-take and some coughing._

"_You said a mouthful, dear."_

_Just to twist the knife a little._

"Uncle, uncle, please go back to normal…"

_Or whatever passed for it. With an internal grin I changed the projection to an anthropomorphized giant lizard-girl and had her lounge in a pin-up pose on a ruined city block, giving Jerome an insouciant wink._

"_So we've got PTMC internal forces here, masquerading as outsiders. No wonder the little weasel was so eager to go along with the McQuarrie decontamination as a proof of concept. And so reluctant to have backup on standby."_

_A raspberry of distaste._

"_This is getting a lot more political than usual."_

"What, a bunch of overpaid jocks sitting around and blanketing every listener with useless noise, while hoping they won't be needed for anything important, while behind the scenes it's just a few people against the tides of shit?"

"_OK, I'll give you that one."_


	34. A Tread of the Bulldozer

Chapter 34: A Tread of the Bulldozer

"Gonna scratch my way, and claw my way, and dig my way back to the top;

Because I never say die, never give in, never stop; give it all that I've got!

I'm breaking out of Hell...From the bottom of the well."

-Joel & Ryan O'Keefe

It wasn't every day I earned a point. I felt oddly accomplished like a house pet who had mastered a new trick in the absence of his mistress. For everybody's sake I was willing to gloss over several really bad minutes trying to wake her up, just as she'd had to for me somewhat earlier in the…well, earlier in the run. Lord knew you lost track of the diurnal increments with these hours, much less what they were on your reference point when you'd been gone for a while.

It felt nice to be superfluous. We were combat ready by my nerves and her speed but I preferred a slightly larger margin of protection when the firepower didn't get downrange quite fast enough. It felt nice to be out of the spotlight, too. Just another set of adjunct forces doing their duty and quietly waiting while Hamster had the searing spotlight all to herself out there. She wasn't squawking for help, or saying much of anything, so I didn't give it much thought. Absently I tried to dislodge a piece of the turnaround-time steak from my back teeth with my tongue but gave it up after a futile couple of tries and an odd sucking sound that had lizard-Jenny looking at me inquisitively.

Although I wished Hannah would at least give me a progress report or something, perhaps a status percentage back over the comm link to the Carrot, but she was treating this as a proper op with no external results.

Something was tickling at the back of my mind, like the steak fragment, and with my mental tongue—although on second thought, the image was too odd to live—I managed to dig it free.

"Hey, are we getting any hails from the newsies?"

This was the ship registered to PTMC's CFO, after all, right here with _something_ big going on. Jenny waved an indolent claw upwards and I saw a schematic of all the relevant ships with communications lasers registered in a distinct glowing orange hue. It looked like a damned spiderweb out there and we were the focus of a rather large number of them. Ask a silly question, get the answer it deserved…

"…Nevermind. Nothing interesting, I take it."

_"Nah, they all think we're the original owner. I've been staying quiet, letting the automated systems handle it. The CFO's voice storage is filling RIGHT up with requests for comment. I was thinking of doing an inspection pass of the facility to get us a little more public and a little harder to memory-hole, but…"_

I never liked to explore her verbal but.

"Would it make any difference?"

_"Short term complications. Medium term possible advantages. Long term impact, negligible."_

Out of the list of things to do, going in front of the solar system's media looking like we'd lost the battle and to be the focus of spot coverage , including all the agencies banging on our Io file and past history and PTMC involvement and etc etc… Giving away our identity right out in the open when we still had in-system engagements before we could even get to the Belt/outsystem danger points, well, it was right up there with pissing on an electric fence.

"You can probably see from my grimace that I've been considering the ramifications. Skipskies."

_"Stuff this in your pipe and bubble it—the less media cleanup we dump on Dravis, the more we may be likely to survive until we can get to our old stomping grounds around Jupiter and Saturn. I've been doing some catching up since my nap and Hamster should be just about done. If it went well."_

"It's been a while."

_"No shit it's been a while. PTMC shuttles versus me."_

"It's also been a while since you did the head…thing."

I tossed off absently, only to have the lizard-Jenny stick out an impressive length of her tongue at me and remain silent for a moment.

_*…Speech is a difficult habit to break, I guess. Keep reminding me.*_

It just felt so much nicer. A soft sharpness in my mind, like grasping the hilt of a well-used pistol, it just felt right. All the right shapes in all the right places.

"I'll try to remember, but this is a lot more pleasant for what it's worth. A certain extra added dimension."

_*Tell you what, at some point we'll have to try to get an audiophile to describe it. Extra cash prize if they can avoid using terminology usually reserved for booze snobs.*_

"Only thing I ever attached much importance to, with booze, was either its ability to flavor meat, burn well, or lower inhibitions economically."

_*And did you enjoy your flaming uninhibited flavored meat?*_

"I had all of a month at Io before you transferred into my classes! And you didn't need the alcohol!"

My cheeks were a bit flushed. We'd hit it off rather promptly and rather well, and it was a good thing I'd acquired some rudimentary, er, call them gunnery skills, because they were _required_.

_*Nice to know I can still make you move blood around your body at my whim.*_

"Are you counting the bolsters?"

_*AND the engines. And the Carrot. And putting Hamster's transmissions through, speaking of. Narrowbeam but non-encrypted.*_

Causing blood to route from my head straight into my frustration muscles. I sighed. Well, nothing looked like it was exploding out there or hopefully somebody would have told me. For her to be broadcasting, and broadcasting in the clear, meant she—or somebody—wanted it to be overheard. Formal it was.

"Patch her in. Not in my head, though. Please."

_*I'm not entirely unmerciful…live in three, two.*_

The giant lizard-girl stood up, sweeping her garguantuan tail through one last part of the cityscape—a power line falling in a shower of silent sparks—held up a single finger, and disappeared into a video feed. Hannah looked like an idiot in her helmet and she wasn't smiling.

"Hamster Ball to"

Pleasepleasepleasepleasekeepmynameoutofthis…

"Material Defender one zero three two, confirming successful hotfix application. Please acknowledge."

And now I was on the hook. Hastily I held up my hands in an cupped shape to Jenny. With all of this being no doubt recorded, I couldn't RISK the subvocalisation projected my own video in a little box next to Hannah's feed, and as hoped, it was from the camera in the cockpit. In other words…a featureless helmet, black-visored, against the background of the bolsters. God it was good to be understood quickly by your partner.

"MD ten thirty two copies. Stand by for handoff and aid shuttle fleet dispatch. Out."

It was strange, having stage fright, but it didn't change much. The window winked out as Jenny cut the transmission and I sighed in relief.

"Didn't step on my dick."

_*This time.*_

"Just paint Hamster with the laser, will you?"

_*I hear and obey, master. Besides, since you haven't filled me in, I'd like to know what the hell is going on too!*_

"It's not good enough that we're not involved?"

_*Call it a nosy impulse. Channel open.*_

"About time…I thought you might have uttered that little statement and pissed right off."

"Nice to hear from you too, Hamster. How'd it go?"

It was going to be so nice to have her gone. I had my acerbic quotient topped off with my prior choice of partner. Having her gone did mean no hostages to rescue, but also meant we could save the stations, run hotter, and save a lot more infrastructure…and by extension the corporate autocracy. Sigh.

"Slow as balls. Like being under fire the whole time, I don't understand _anything_ of what that routine does or how."

("Playing it close to the chest?")

_*Keeping the cards just about under my skin. Anybody with a real ELINT suite will probably be able to tease out the essentials but I tried to keep it machine-clean and plausible if you were clean-rooming the design.*_

Of course. Even though a lot of that went over my tired head I got the gist and covered her ass right back.

"I don't understand it much either, but it's what the gear spat out and it works. …It does work, yes?"

"I was getting to that, if you'd shut up and let me monologue for a damn minute here. It works, or at least I suppose it works. It finished, I hailed the station and it acknowledged my hail, I checked my overflowing network message store and watched it talk to the relay to get it, I TRIED to log into the security camera feeds to check bandwidth but it didn't accept my password…"

A tribe of heebie-jeebies trampled down my spine, retroactively terrifying me. I heard Jenny catch her breath and start muttering.

"…And you saw what happened back on Mercury, and on Tycho, and still decided to pull that trigger on full access?"

I'd be seeing those little incidents for a long, long time, mostly at sleepless 2 AMs when the existential dread of the human condition weighed heaviest on everybody's soul.

"Fuck, boss-man, you're right here, the goons are right behind me, we're all outside the security perimeter, and with all the spare scrap civvie scrap metal it's a real…"

I could see where this was going, and wearily chorused with her.

"…target rich environment."

Nothing quite cleared the airspace of those civvies like when it became evident that friendly fire wasn't.

"Besides, it worked. Except for not letting me into anything of the station other than my roaming network store…I wonder if that means it's really fixed."

_*I probably couldn't get in either from here, and I'm not sure I want to try. Could try for a basic directive-level maintenance report, though.*_

If hamfisted Hamster hadn't triggered the shitswarm of shuttles, Jenny wouldn't either. What was another couple minutes to make sure?

("Do it, let's confirm there's no surprises here before we do the rest of this Chinese fire drill.")

"Could it be related to Tawny half throwing you in irons back in lunar orbit? One message, one relay call…hold on, going to try a high-level access and see If I can get at least a sitrep from it."

Hands off the sticks and I balled and released my fists to keep circulation going. Jenny animated her little cartoon pacing around my display with a communicator to her ear for a few moments, then threw a thumbs-up at me.

"…OK, everything looks…"

Normal wasn't quite the word.

"Functional within parameters. You ready for the handoff to Tethys escort and to debriefing?"

"Shit no! How do you get ready for something like that? Slap your forehead enough for the brain damage to be cumulative?"

_*Now there's a long-time PTMC employee who knows the secrets of promotion.*_

I snorted in half-laughter at the combination of comments.

"Well, the alternative is days in high-gee interspersed with violent firefights against shit that's faster than your reaction time. Tell you what, why don't we trade? You can hot-seat it to Pluto, I'll go sit in a briefing room on Shiva and refuse to talk unless it's over a full meal and pitcher of cold beer, and look forward to the hot bed waiting for me."

_*You just HAD to be an idealist back up there.*_

("Don't fucking remind me. It's still the right thing to do, so don't even think it.")

Treacherous thoughts were creeping through the back of my brain. Out so far from the Sun that Earth had long since vanished and even ol' Sol was just another star in the sky, where methane froze, all to defend a humanity that arguably didn't deserve it…

_*Don't need to, you probably are already.*_

Dammit! It was still the right decision. We were the right people, and we'd already made inroads to mitigating the bigger disaster. Besides…all my hard currency had gone up in smoke. There were worse things than chasing the Big Contract on PTMC's dime. Either we'd fuck up and die, in which case it was just another operational risk, or we'd pull through the fire mostly intact and exfil…with or without the money. I wasn't against a LITTLE commerce raiding if we needed fuel or food until I could start earning respectably again.

"Nice try, Jerome, if you stick me with that battered bitch I'll eject into space and let the museums try to recover it before it falls into the Sun."

Ouch! Quickly I held my finger up and shook my helmet in a vigorous "no" to Jenny. Whatever form her retort would take, I didn't want to know about it and didn't want her to do it. Still, I wasn't about to swallow any slams like that. Living with the old iron gave you a certain fund of retorts to idiots.

"And if I wanted to fly a PTMC shuttle I'd have pulled the back wheels off my tricycle and eaten a lot more lead paint."

"Much as I'd love to spend a few quality hours insulting you, the worlds are waiting. Sum up the disaster you call the latest plan."

_*This is going to sound crazy, but I can actually see the two of you painting the town red. Get some ethanol downed and I'd stand by with bail and with cameras recording.*_

The idea of going out drinking with Hamster…yeah, there was potential there, if not time. And right now I didn't want to deal with her until we'd gotten the bigger issues sorted out. She was a one point five drink—minimum—before she was funny instead of abrasive to me.

"Simply put, wait until the tactical team…"

"…goons!..."

"…is done with whatever they need to do to the point of sparing a few shuttles to escort you back to Shiva at speed. I'll deal with Dravis so you'll probably just have a debrief and some paid vacation until this is handled."

"Paid vacation meaning 'on a tight leash' so I can't go running my mouth, you mean."

"Well, yes, but on the corporate dime. Could probably argue for nicer accomodations after all the shock and stress and such."

"Oh boy, buster, you better believe I'm ramming a sob-story home. You headed for Mars?"

_*Unless you want to do some sight-seeing or give an interview.*_

Her tone wasn't exactly malicious, but close enough that I twitched in disdain at the idea.

"Off to undo the Dystopia Planetia yards, resupply, beltwards to the problem spots. As far outsystem as the system goes."

"You sad sack of shit, I'll stand the victory dinner when you get back, if there's anything left of you bigger than filler for a pine box. It's been a real short-bus education, Boss; go kick somebody else's ass for a while and my worst regards to your silicon secretary."

_*Uh, transmission cut from her end. I guess that's all we get.*_

Jenny flashed back to her usual uniformed self and shrugged in puzzlement. I felt it was incumbent on me to somehow sum up the experience but the first thing that came to mind wasn't exactly flattering.

"Well. That was like being headbutted by a woodpecker."

_*Several thousand times in a row? Eh, about right. You want the goo…DAMMIT…the security detail?*_

"Catching, isn't it? Yeah, you'd better put Dravis' escort service on."

The brief display fuzz as Jenny inevitably put that to a mental image was expected as the communication window popped open. I'd dealt with them before, while Jenny was out of commission, and they didn't seem to have much of a personality. The visual was still just of a featureless helmet like mine, but Jenny propped herself up against the window staring into it intently—a little backhanded reminder that I hadn't bothered filling her in on any of it. Well, there'd be plenty of time. Too much damn time.

"Material Defender One Hundred And Three, Two to Tethys Tactical lead element…"

If I was saddled with a stupid number, I'd try to say it differently every time.

"McQuarrie Station should be back under control, please confirm and…"

If I knew what they were _really_ there for…Jenny's comment about it being a corporate prison bounced around my skull like a zero-gravity caffeinated ferret.

"…execute designated mission. I require numbers two additional tasks—Hamster Ball holds important data and a VIP, escort back to Shiva for debrief as soon as elements can be spared. And confirm successful access to local systems when docked so I can leave station. I will be standing by as external backup until docking and confirmation."

There was a pause and the helmet turned slightly sideways.

"Lead element copies verify and escort, MD1032. Standby on current channel."

And for the second time in as many minutes the remote channel was cut—or at least muted. I pursed my lips and Jenny nodded, holding her hands first over her ears and then over her mouth.

_*I like you better when you're unofficial.*_

"I like it better when somebody gives me at least a callsign to talk to."

_*Yeah, well, to them you're just a hired gun with jumped-up privileges and no real knowledge.*_

"Everybody's somebody's bitch."

Five of the ten transports arced off lazily toward McQuarrie with a deceptive buildup of speed as I drummed my fingers on the sticks' rests.

_*And right now we're all PTMC's bitch.*_

"Right up until we have to be physics' bitch. More. Again. What did you want to know?"

_*Where do I start with an open-ender like that?*_

"Where do you get off using a phrase like open-ender without an innuendo?"

_*Oooh, somebody's feeling peppery after his little catnap! Hrmf. Argh. I don't know. I was going to ask for goon details but they're handled. I was going to ask about decrypt status but we got that. The only real thing that comes to mind is how to handle Mars.*_

"Other than a fucking comprehensive shopping list. You were gonna try to deal with McQuarrie to get provisions, or did you…"

_*Fuck that with the long end of the stick. We're already in for one hell of a debrief, if we get that far without a knife in the back, I'd just as soon not deal with it. I'm thinking about running the __Carrot__ in.*_

I had naively expected to be riding Jenny down from orbit, but then it hit me. The heating was rough on the armor under the best of circumstances, with a profile that wasn't exactly low-drag. With holes and punctures and stray damage, including to the underside in the form of the landing leg…

"I prefer to drink my atomic fireballs, not co-star in them. Shit, does it have the legs for it though? Mars is such a special snowflake."

Mars was absolute shit for flight, that was the short version. The long version spun around a third of Earth's gravity but only a hundredth of its atmospheric density. That meant you needed rockets to hit takeoff speed, props or jets would barely keep you flying at a decent approximation of Mach—which was about what you needed to keep aloft in the first place!- and when it came time to turn you still had all your inertia! Landing was a special case, reverse thrust had the same problem as forward thrust, chutes were as effective as a colander, and wheel brakes benefitted from having more than a third of normal weight on the wheels! If you didn't have a five-mile long runway you'd want beefy arresting gear.

That said, irrepressible human ingenuity HAD come up with some interesting designs. High-bypass massive jet engines built entirely around a skinny littlefuselage, for a platform that could stay up for hours…or rocket gliders, of course. Rockets were big business for the shipyards and for anybody who wanted to get back off the red dustball again. What we didn't have was rockets. Sure, Jenny packed the peroxide thrusters – slash – afterburners, but that relied on oxygen in the atmosphere. Which Mars lacked in useful quantity on both counts.

Shit. The Carrot was a toy, designed for mostly only orbit-to-orbit cruising, because of course you'd have your luxury shuttle for ground-to-orbit and short-haul hops.

_*That's a _good_ question and I wish I knew the answer. Unless you want Utopia Planetia to use the grapplers…*_

My lady obligingly showed me a detailed animation of what that was likely to do to the hull. It wasn't pretty, and I didn't feel like breathing one percent of what I was used to.

"First rule when we're in a hole. Pass!"

_*Then it's back to plan A, as in A long-ass glide path. Down is never a problem! Up again, well, there's always the single-stage-to-orbit boosters.*_

"And let Dravis eat the tab."

_*Let Dravis eat a dick, but in general yes. Hey, we got a…"_

Her image blinked off to reveal the helmet of one of the faux-Tethys folks, visor down as always, from inside their cockpit as always.

"Tethys Tactical lead element to Material Defender one-oh-three two"

It sounded so damn stupid, hearing it come right back to me in that machine-like monotone.

"Reclamation of facility proceeding according to plan. Control systems responding in nominal fashion, no pertinent aberrations to report. Secondary element cleared for escort."

_*Boy are there a lot of blanks in that little summation!*_

It was harder when she was in my head, because I tended to assume that just because I could hear her speech as thoughts, she could hear mine. I had to consciously think to articulate, which was a bizarre enough concept on its own.

"Copy, Tethys lead. VIP escort call sign is Hamster Ball. Pilot Hannah Talbot will have Shiva debrief per further instructions from Samuel Dravis."

And, because I could never resist putting in the boot…

"Tell Bruce I might not make this year's party."


	35. Phoning It In

Book 4: Knife In The Black

Chapter 35: Phoning It In

"A man of men, he's the king of the trade  
Omnipotent, to the fools he enslaves  
Wide-awake, from the nightmare they made  
One mistake, diyo day"

-JJ Grey & Mofro

_Whether he realized it or not this was going to be a dead-nuts easy leg. We'd demonstrated recovery, we'd found out about the controller the hard way…using 'we' charitably, to avoid saying that my fuckup had nearly gotten the boy killed…if I could land the __Carrot__ without smearing it all over Olympia Mons then we'd be in good shape. I could maybe use the bubble to effect but it'd be easier and use a lot less fuel to sit back, let Jerome enjoy third-grav for a while, eat something with substance, and play data bitch for a while again to lure out the controller. Let the PTMC rocket jockeys spike it while the flight crews replaced my armor._

_If anything was ever that straightforward._

_*Goons are off the air, dear heart. Shall I call up Dravis now or wait?*_

"When we've finally got some good news? Why wait?"

_*I thought good news was that we didn't have to zorch the relay.*_

"Relatively speaking, with similar large-scale implications. Just let me talk to the weasel."

_*Your wish is my skeptically-received suggestion.*_

_I wiggled my fingers and sweet-talked the relay a little. Overall traffic was down, a good sign, but I didn't have the time to catch up on the news. Civilization had enough inertia—hopefully—that a couple more days of our torture wouldn't bring it down._

_Oddly enough, while the channel opened readily, there wasn't anybody on the other end. I could see Dravis' office but nobody behind the desk._

"….Samuel? Got good news for you if you're there…?"

_The image flickered and an internal transfer prefix crept across the underlying coding of the transmission. Good ol' Sammy popped into view, a lot more of a closeup than anybody wanted. I zoomed the image out before Jerome did too much twitching. He'd combed his fringe and looked to be wearing a much more formal suit than we'd seen him in. Fresh skinned, or at least with less pallor underneath the give-nothing-away makeup._

"Ah, Mr. Corbell. I await your report with considerable interest. I was just discussing you with the Board, although our chief financial officer was forced to participate by videoconferencing as, ahem, his ship was unavailable."

_It was going to be one of _those_ discussions._

"Yes, and his ship was the reason I've got results from McQuarrie instead of just the relay right now. Of course, if external time pressure has slacked off, I can leave the Carrot on McQuarrie and continue at a significantly slower pace…"

_I had never seen two men so dead set against each other. PTMC didn't much need Jerome any more, now that they had a working decryption program, but he was on contract and the only one who'd touch anything like this, and with a record of success and who could get to the other trouble spots in time. Jerome didn't much need the contract, except for his own humanity and the fact that all our cash was evaporated. Served me right for insisting on keeping it in valuable instruments instead of electronically. So they had each other over a barrel, by ties that wouldn't be broken. Two opposed gears grinding like this meant nothing but damage, but the longer they stayed engaged the worse the damage would be. This was going to get a lot uglier before it got sorted out._

"Continue to assume that external time pressures are still very, very applicable. If that changes you will be notified. What is the current status of McQuarrie station?"

_Not like he needed the reminder, but I threw up a picture of me in a traditionally iconic striped prison jumpsuit with a big blinking red circle-and-line over it. Once things got into the usual dickwavery there was no guarantee he'd listen, but I could at least TRY for damage control._

"Returned to local control. Ms. Talbot reported successful personal login and datastore access but inability to access sample security feeds. I requested a standard maintenance report…"

_It needed something. He hadn't read the report or asked about it, because I hadn't bothered to clutter his brain with useless details. Hastily I seized on the first thing that seemed out of the ordinary about the report and threw it up as text above the window, which he read off with a raised eyebrow and a bit of a laugh in his voice._

"…and the only item of note was that deck three reported an ongoing chronic shortage of toilet paper. Your data marines reported the facility was being reclaimed per plan and all systems seemed nominal. I tasked the other element to escort Ms. Talbot back to Shiva for debriefing, as she has been present for all successful infiltrations to date and has an operationally verified decryption program."

_Odd that Dravis didn't seem much at ease._

"Transmit another copy of that program with all possible speed. It will need to be tested against our experimental, ah, 'encrypted' installation. I will also require all your logs of McQuarrie-area communication with Tethys Tactical and with Ms. Talbot. Describe your exposure to the media."

_Their experimental ….what?! I threw up the words in a pulsing yellow hue where I'd pasted the TP whining previously. Jerome's right eyebrow lifted, then both lowered dangerously._

"Does the UEG know you're putting the problem right back into what just got cleared out?!"

_Ouch….that sounded like blackmail to my nasty little political brain. Dravis scowled, brow wrinkling into a pattern that reminded me of imagined Martian canals. Or a scrotum._

"Material Defender, I believe you violent types have a saying along the lines of 'know your enemy'. This is being studied in the same fashion that we study exploits and virii."

_And catch the old holes that have since been abandoned…but not the really old ones that get used in clever ways. It didn't fill me with confidence, but at least it was being worked on by a group who knew what 'air gap' meant._

"There's also a saying along the lines of 'we have met the enemy and he is us'."

"Cartoon aphorisms. Yes, very wise. I am sure the Board will have every confidence in a man who spouts imagined wisdom."

"Mr. Dravis, I admire the _sand_ of a man who can ape apocrypha from a different mindset while his fellow officers and company are under siege from the rest of civilization crying for answers!"

_*Oh, very nice! ….But get back on track!*_

_Just because I admired the snark he could spew didn't mean I admired the waste of time or the frankly pointless bitching. Reasons like this, though, were part of why I never had cut off his transmissions. Tension grounded itself where it could, and if these two men—both of their nuts in the same vise-snapped at each other, at least they were both doing their jobs and maybe a little better for having been able to show fangs. _That_ I understood._

"Not just answers….results. Regrettably, despite your piratical tendencies and tenuous grasp on civility, the decision has been made that it is better to restrain a cannon than to hope it will go over the side, because frequently it goes through the deck instead."

"How pleasant to know that the rodents on a foundering ship believe in roping me further into this."

"Enough rope to hang yourself quite high indeed, Material Defender. Preferably after further correctional visits."

_Much more of this and I was going to put up a fucking scoreboard!_

"_Speaking_ of correctional…"

_DAMMIT JEROME YOU IDIOT_

"…transmitting program and logs now. Stand by on sideband three."

_Fuming, I did as implied. Dravis could take it as corrective of the problem, but he was canny. Too canny._

"Receipt acknowledged. Stand by."

_The channel switched to hold music, an offensive string bastardization of a popular guitar tune with some sort of woodwind taking the place of the vocal and a cello replacing a trumpet. Annoyedly, I muted the audio portion and faded in the original track from my library at the same volume._

_*Are you quite done? Got it out of your system? Whipped it out on his desk and found him wanting, so we can get on with this? I thought this was going to be a short and sweet generally positive call.*_

_Jerome sighed and shrugged, looking very unapologetic._

"Whaddyawant? What's he going to do, pull us off this, in which case good luck, next bastards, time to evac? Discplinary sanctions, blacklisting, all of which assume we survive to care about it, and a PTMC blacklist looks pretty good to some other folks out there…"

_Jumpsuit me spread her hand across her face tiredly, shaking her head._

_*I know you're sick of the bullshit, but you're not LIKE this with anybody else.*_

"I know. He just makes my hair stand on end, if I could fire him as a client I would in a heartbeat. One of yours because they're faster."

_*They bloody get faster when you pull stupid shit…fuckit, you're the one who's got to live with the consequences. I'm just the one who has to live with you.*_

"All I'm focusing on right now is the 'live' part of that. The rest is…bullshit."

_I had my mouth open to say something intelligent and probably inflammatory when the channel came live again. I hastily dumped the music playback and unmuted video and reenabled audio after quickly flashing in behind the window and pointing at it so he had some idea it was going to resume. Not like he had a finger up his nose, but it was nice to have warnings._

"The only remaining concern with McQuarrie is your direct contact with the station and with the media."

_And wasn't that just like the weasel, another brusque demand to another annoyingly human resource._

"Jack and shit, respectively. Stayed in the Carrot and kept my hole shut like a good little drone."

_NOW Dravis relaxed a bit, although he was cultivatedly hard to read._

"I had not counted silence among your dubious virtues, nevertheless that does make containment a great deal easier. Your restraint is commendable…and widely applicable."

"Weren't you chewing my ass out earlier for showing restraint in not blowing up all your toys as you initially wanted?"

_Dravis lifted an annoyed eyebrow._

"Very well, Material Defender. While your actions so far have been a gross departure from our agreed procedure, you have nevertheless achieved surprising inroads toward the broader strategic objectives that necessitated a contract in the first place. Consider that your pat on the back if you must."

_His meeting with the Board must be going badly…or he must be, somewhere under the bullshit, pretty pathetically grateful for the news on McQuarrie's quiet recovery. It boded well for the other stations and facilities._

"Nice to know you do have confidence in me after all. I was beginning to wonder. Are you planning to distribute the program and instructions to all local forces?"

_There was a long dangerous pause as our boss' face began to shade toward vermillion even through the makeup. I wondered if Jerome had finally sunk his claws in too far._

"…I have every confidence in you continuing to make further calls just as trying, which I suppose implies a certain fatalistic acceptance of you blundering out of danger somehow and obtaining results worth calling in. Your program will be tested against our experimental example and then distributed immediately for immediate use. This will of course change your priorities, unless you have…relevant…suggestions or concerns."

_Relevant to our survival, probably not relevant to him. Jerome lifted a hand up to scratch his chin, forgetting he still had the helmet on, and blinked in surprise at the dull thunk._

"…Based on results from Tycho, I would suggest that widescale distribution not be initiated yet. If local forces decrypt the installation and a secondary controller is present, this may result in a severely fucking non-optimal outcome."

_We were both thinking back to that prisoner transport, and the __Potemkin__ having to slag down the outpost. Dravis waited patiently, as did I, projecting floating question marks around my head. I had no idea what he was contemplating either but was rapidly running through all the possibles. We'd talked about luring the secondary out…_

"It may be possible to correctly encrypt a transmission to summon the secondary controller to an external location for maintenance. The destructive sort. Then the main decrypt could be properly run."

"Interesting. Why?"

_Because there was another saying that went thou shalt not suffer thy bitch to live? Because you didn't want something floating around behind your back that would be a time bomb for every effort? Jerome held up his hand._

"Stand by."

_And I cut the video and audio, playing some better hold music. It featured an operatic tenor set of iron lungs belting out a properly aggressive vocal line above screamingly clean guitars and a bassline that was capable of being used for dusting the ceiling. Not at the volume I was using, of course, but because the station deserved something a little higher-energy. Reaching into my mental desk I tossed the file on the spherical secondary controller up and shrunk the vid window to a dot in his peripheral vision._

_*Look at this thing…*_

_I obligingly rotated it for him, highlighting the interface port at the base. Female, spring-loaded cover. Nothing to snap off, hard to accumulate debris. Redundant thrusters in clusters, plenty of armor, no tooling, dangerous or otherwise._

_*They built them just for redundancy. To puff around somewhere safe and hold backups. The only comm…fuck this.*_

_I wasn't going to give him technical details straight into his damn head, that didn't seem fair at all._

_"Because I'm nice, this is over voice. The only communication is a real short whitelist…it can say exactly two things to drones and exactly one thing to the controller. "Come here and interface", "disengage and run program", and if it's talking to the controller, "Hello?". If the controller gives our demented basketball the cold shoulder, the secondary will assume it's in charge and attempt to go to the controller and restore a backup. If it can't get there, or if the restore fails, then it'll call in a drone, reprogram it from its current backup, send it away, lather rinse repeat until out of drones or the controller starts answering the periodic hello. Simple. Elegant. Dumb."_

_Jerome looked uncomfortable, as he always did when I gave him the technical details of anything, but I could tell he was trying to follow._

"Great, so they're simple, elegant, dumb, nearly got us killed. IS there even a maintenance command?"

_It was easy to get frustrated with somebody who didn't live and breathe this kind of stuff. Especially when I was all fizzy with excitement and energy. Felt like a kid hopped up on soda and candy and stuck with their parents at the dentist's office or a banker or something._

_"…for the love of cheese, of course there's a maintenance command! It only knows to come in for a backup because the controller tells IT 'come here and interface' and then 'disengage and run program'. If it receives that transmission with a maintenance access—instead of the controller's signature—hanging off it, then if the access checks out with its internal backup it'll obey and go to the coordinates attached to the message."_

"That means we need a maintenance access that's older than this whole kerfuffle. Which means not ours."

_*Which means asking for further support.*_

"Not like he hasn't come through with resources, or gotten in our way with more than words…god, I can't believe I'm taking his side."

_*Plead temporary insanity. I'll back THAT up.*_

"All right, all right, hand over the weasel."

_Out of a small sense of artistic pride, I let the solo finish before I returned Jerome to live connection. The back of my mind was asking if the board meeting had been delayed while we worked stuff out…and what size of further enemies that would cause. When Dravis came on, his audio was muted as he turned away from the pickup and gesticulated to somebody I couldn't see, speaking animatedly._

"_YES_, Material Defender, please do continue. Promptly. If you'd be so kind."

"Short version, the auxillary controllers need to be blown in place before they can reprogram drones on the fly from the backup , or activate 'can't talk to the controller' failsafes such as we ran into at Tycho. It is impractical to assume that the main controller can be decrypted prior to a keepalive sabotaging the process."

_He HAD been listening. I felt a warm glow suffuse me, and then acknowledged reality by throttling back the reactor I'd inadvertently kicked up a little. Habits were dangerous._

"Noted. Is there any reason not to proceed with decryption for facilities that do not have a secondary controller on the manifest?"

"Nothing comes to mind. Uh. If there are facilities where, for whatever reason, the uplinks have been damaged and don't respond to the program, you may have to send in teams for ground-level decryption."

"I will also note that I find it quite droll that despite being initially engaged as that very team you have nevertheless extracted yourself into a high-level position."

"Your prior praise has quite gone to my head so I find it easy to brush off such a transparent jibe."

_Jerome commented loftily, ignoring the way Dravis' slight smirk burned away._

"At any rate, hate to keep the bigwigs waiting, so I'll keep this quick. I need a maintenance access that would have been valid before the rogue update and would still be current. I'll leave a blank in the program for whatever you want to spread around but this one has GOT to work for Utopia Planetia. I'm going to try to develop the procedure remotely en route…"

_He was? I mean, he expected me to? I gave him more purple question marks, floating around my curious frown._

"…and after I have results I'll call back. We can discuss the updated target list at that point."

_Dravis blinked, as if he hadn't really expected results at all._

"Acknowledged, Mr. Corbell. I will get that access to you as soon as possible and report to the Board that we are on track to roll out the reclamation procedure on all facilities without active roaming backups…and that the adaptive procedure is under development. Do make time a priority in your refit, the Belt situation is deteriorating quite badly."

_And with that he was out. What a lovely little bombshell. My projection wound up and kicked the window—with some violence—out of the boy's view._

_*So. You wanna tell me what you plan to do while you're flat on your ass in the bath?*_

_Jerome stretched upward, flattening his hands on the scarred transparent aluminum of the canopy and pushing luxuriously until his shoulders gave out a fusillade of cracks that even I winced to hear._

"There's really no reason why we can't do this by remote, is there? I can make nice with whoever's in charge, you can figure out how to say 'come out into the open' in your language to the secondary, they can shoot it down easily enough, then you get them to run the decryption program. Hey presto, Utopia Planetia back in Martian hands before we even get there."

_Great minds thought alike. Sort of._

_*That's not too far off what I was thinking…except I was thinking that we'd do it while the refit was running, so you could sit on your ass in third-grav and kick back a couple stiff drinks and a real meal.*_

_I bet myself a couple imaginary bucks that he'd come over all idealistic._

"If we had the time, I'd say sure, but I want to get this sorted out as quickly as feasible."

_I owed myself a couple imaginary bucks._

_*So we can go charging into these belt automated factories? I'd call you Quixotic but even he only went for windmills, not cliffs.*_

"Relax, senorita Panza, it'll be a relief to have a simple elimination run."

_*If I'm your goddamn squire, you'd better turn Sancho Panza into Kancho Panda if only to count the winces from everybody you introduce me to. What makes you think it's going to be even that complicated? We could reprogram the controller, tell it to bring every drone in and tell them to shut down for maintenance, hey presto, pile of inert scrap.*_

_I'd been giving the issue some thought, because the smartest way to fight was sometimes finding a clever back door._

"It's not satisfying at all, but it would promote longevity. We'll play it by ear depending on whatever's going on. Your brain has gotten my bruised ass this far."

_"My really frustratingly coincidental past has let us bypass a pleasingly large number of deathtraps, yes, but you're still on mission."_

"They may just be windmills but they've already kicked plenty of ass."

_"Yes, dear. Get out. Dravis sent what I need and I'm going to be piling on the coal…one internal for now until you're quite done making nice-nice. Make your calls, and then it's time to get naked."_

"One of these days…"

_Jerome grumbled, clambering out again. I felt a little bad, he hadn't been needed for this entire thing, but mostly I felt good precisely because my cleverness had had a directly useful result. The Mars idea, well, it was the best of both worlds. We could BOTH sit back and be pampered while somebody else did the hard work. For fucking once._

_For decency's sake, I waited until he'd stuck his head under the kitchen taps and run cold water down his throat, and until he'd run hot yellow water down the facilities, and until he'd gingerly seated himself in the __Carrot__'s cockpit before I pestered him again._

_*Don't touch anything, I've got this.*_

"What's there to touch? It's all projection displays, as far as I know it's eye-tracking and voice-control. Not really designed to be run from here. Seat's horrible."

_*Not everybody can sit on their own decade-old fart remnants, you know. You're just spoiled. Intel has the director….directress?...directrix? Sounds awfully S&M…as being an Eileen Caldwell. Want the executive summary?*_

_Jerome wiggled his ass from side to side, trying to find a comfortable spot in a seat that not even the Hamster had found fault with. Of course she was admittedly built to about 3/4ths of his sparse frame so she'd probably find navigating a toilet seat quite roomy.._

"Very executive."

_*She's been in the position for a couple years now, pulled the yards out of a slump, did some clever politicking to use spare lift capacity to build out the spacedocks in orbit until you could theoretically start and finish an entire battlecruiser up there. Running the place at an admittedly slim profit, but as a UEG endeavor that's not bad. Well-liked by crews, in that 'our boss is a bigger hardass than your boss' sense, mostly left alone by UEG nannies. Humanitarian. No interesting dirt. Married to a captain of one of the first ships the yard commissioned under her, which is cute but irrelevant. Want me to see if she'll answer a call from a duly-designated PTMC representative appointed to deal with her facility?*_

_Facts at my fingertips, data swimming in the cloud, an infinity of potential, and I was stuck in the fucking shuttle until I got fixed. That meant I'd have to skull-sweat what I couldn't squeeze out of the spaceframe for fun._

"Go right ahead, Miss Corbell. And hold all my other calls."


	36. Check Energy Light

Chapter 36: Check Energy Light

"You're sleek as a thoroughbred; your seats are a featherbed

You'll turn everybody's head today

We'll glide on our motor trip with pride in our ownership,

The envy of all we survey!"

-Robert & Richard Sherman

Being in a strange cockpit was just outright peculiar. Everything wasn't where I was used to. If I was honest with myself—more so than usual—I'd spent way too much time in a Pyro. If Jenny transferred herself into something else tomorrow, then it'd take me YEARS to unlearn all the muscle memory. Of course, since it was human nature to chase benchmarks whether wrong or right, I'd always be comparing myself to her own flesh at the controls in the moldy days of yore, and I was fairly sure that qualitatively I was better than an inexperienced teenager, no matter how fast she'd been. Then again…she was still faster than me, and still backstopping me. Which spiraled right back around to this. Sitting in a cockpit emphatically not my own just felt like being an intruder. I didn't even know how to fly the damn thing, while I was generally rated it was more or less a cheat.

"Caldwell. Can't this wait?"

And I was running behind mentally. The face on the video window didn't look like she had a lot of time for much of anything. Like Dravis, she was behind a desk, but unlike Dravis the desk seemed like a working one. Stacks of papers littered it and I could see several other opened portable systems perched precariously across the desk. The vista behind her was red girders against brown dust, no doubt breathtaking when the yard was working to specs. And no doubt whatever Jenny had said would have been geared to get fastest response, not necessarily full information.

"Jerome Corbell, PTMC merc. I'm heading your way from MN0012, Tycho Base, the insystem relay, and just now by way of McQuarrie. If you can spare a few minutes, I may be able to get local control back for you within the next half-hour or so."

_That _ made an appropriate dent in her brusque stress-mask and I saw her eyes widen as she dropped a pencil that had been making the high-speed round through her fingers and over her knuckles.

"You're the one I've been hearing about…although that's a roundabout path to get here."

"Tell me about it, I've been under five internal G for most of it. Prototyped the recovery procedure at Tycho, tested it in the relay, and McQuarrie was the first test running the recovery from standard PTMC hardware. You've got a two-stage problem here…your controller is scrambled, which I can fix, but there's an external backup that needs to be fried because there's no way to fix it."

Different people, different communication styles. Unlike Dravis, she wasn't conversationally raking me over the coals, unlike Tawny she wasn't interested in a personal connection, unlike Jenny she didn't love the minutiae. I could play succinct too, and it was a lot easier. Thanks to my own briefings from Her Blueness at least I could pretend I understood what was going on.

"Scrambled is a _hell_ of a way to put it, Mr. Corbell, the spaceframe damage alone has been….considerable. In addition to our rescue efforts for the UEG base."

_*Hope nobody got killed here…might make the reception a little chilly.*_

"All right, then…"

This was the UEG. If Dravis hadn't wanted me to mention anything about the encryption, he would've said so. Right? It wasn't like I was going to burst out with 'your facility's been sabotaged by telepathic aliens! But nothing personal!'

"…Your controller was erroneously _encrypted_ by a faulty software update. The update also removed some of the important safety lockouts…"

_*Like 'don't try to weld the squishy things, keep your speed down to single-digit meters per second in the following coordinates, this is how you lift shit safely…'*_

Below the level of the camera's view—I hoped—I made shooing motions with my fingers. Not that her badinage was ever out of place but this contact was _important_ and I couldn't handle the distraction.

"….and can be easily enough recovered. The backup just needs to be eradicated first or else your facility drones may go into intruder-defense mode. With the safeties not operable, there could be…"

I paused. Aileen frowned and finished my thought less delicately than I was fumbling for.

"Worse trouble than I've already got. All right. You say 'fried', you say 'eliminated', what exactly are we talking about here?"

My line of work, when things were going slightly better than this kooky op.

"Whether you call it 'ordinance interdiction' or 'blown the hell up', it needs to be eradicated definitively. Explosives, beams, hardware physically destroyed."

"If you need something hit with a cutting torch, you came to about the right place. What is this, where is it, and how many volunteers in worker bees will I need?"

For once I was left at a bit of a loss. _Obviously_ she meant some sort of manned pod, but I was left with the utterly fantastical image of space-suited roughnecks riding gigantic metal bees. So that was how the UEG built its ships…Jenny flashed up an image of the pod in question, little more than a vaguely trapezoidal armor-and-glass coffin for the occupant inside. Manipulator arms held a variety of tool attachments, allowing the workers to cut, weld, rivet, who knew what else. Unasked, she echoed down the image of the secondary controller and a data sideband—indicated by a scrolling transmission indicator across the bottom of the video window—that must've been the EM signature and all relevant specifications.

"As far as volunteers, I was rather more thinking you could give your temporary pilot contingent something to do. The secondary itself is armored well, but unarmed."

I hoped. There was no reason to suspect that'd changed until we got out to the unpleasant-surprise Belt.

Aileen glanced down for a moment, reading the specs Jenny had apparently sent over and I took a moment that I hadn't really had yet to appraise her. She was a fairly charming woman of a certain age—the traitor logic in the back of my head reminded me that I wasn't too far off that certain age myself!—and while she was dressed in a fancy enough blouse, it nevertheless bore a few coffee stains and looked rumpled as if she'd been sleeping in it for a while. I sympathized. There was a furrow between her manicured eyebrows that deepened as she finished and looked back my way.

"So this controller just meanders around aimlessly? I can stretch an administrative authority point and get a couple of the stranded pilots airborne…lord knows I've got the propellant stores…but it's crowded down here and nothing manned-scale can turn on a dime in this so-called air. Unless you've got a dog whistle for this evil snow globe, they'll have to loiter on station for a clean shot."

That was a damned good question. If Dravis had come through with the maintenance access Jenny hadn't mentioned it. He'd fucking spammed our EM profile across the entire system, but naturally the infected facilities where it would have been USEFUL hadn't gotten it. We hadn't seen any communication between facilities, but every choice whisker of paranoia balked at the idea of deliberately updating the internal database with our directive, then using it while everything was still corrupt. Just because we hadn't SEEN any kind of retention mechanism for incoming crap during the affected period didn't mean there wasn't one.

Turning my head to the side, I arched my eyebrows in the direction of secretary-outfit Jenny, sitting behind her projected desk. With a mischievous look she blew into a large red dog whistle, conjuring a floppy-eared be-tailed secondary controller bounding across my field of view. While it sat—tail wagging—Jenny leaned to one side of her desk, twirled an imaginary set of mustachios, and with a truly melodramatic sneer leaned on a cliched explosives plunger. An animated explosion propelled pizza-slice shaped fragments of the controller radially outward and out of my view with a fading yip. I had to look away and choke down a laugh before I could face Aileen again.

"Hah, never heard it called that before..."

Cover my ass, cover my ass, any attempts to explain Jenny or her sense of humor was violating the cardinal rule of being in a hole…

"…best I got was 'armored basketball'. Yes, if I can link through to one of the yard's wideband transmitters I can send a signal that should summon it to whatever coordinates you'd prefer."

"That's not bad either..."

For the first time a smile cracked her serious face. Smiling, she looked a hell of a lot better.

"…You can't just send us the waveform and parameters directly?"

I shook my head. At least this was a softball question.

"Right now this is all experimental. I run a damned good electronic warfare suite…"

Jenny batted her eyelashes at me, leaning forward over the desk to display a hint of cleavage.

_*You're so sweet to me, Mr. Corbell…*_

"…and this is the first attempt to talk to a secondary controller. If it doesn't go as planned I'd like to keep the flexibility of a live connection."

"Explain to me, if you'd be so kind, why a critical UEG facility is entertaining experimental procedures?"

And now the smile was gone. Still, she was still softballing me. Comparatively.

"That was about what I was asking myself at the Mercury relay. The fallback procedures are considerably worse. Ground-level eradication of all drones, which will put them into intruder-defense mode. Local pilots can't, as you say, maneuver well in the yard's confines and there's a lot down there to risk. Alternatively, you could shut down all power….including your hardline to the contaminated base….until the drones shut down from lack of propellant and energy. Then you still have a cleanup problem except nothing is moving to make it easier to pick out. I could send you the controller fix or do it remotely, we know that works and PTMC is rolling it out right now to every facility and station that doesn't have a secondary. Problem is, when the broken basketball realizes the controller isn't broken like it, it assumes the controller is dead and reprograms the drones. Depending on local settings, that may result in being back to intruder-defense mode. That happened on the Tycho outpost and how I discovered there even WAS a secondary. Nearly didn't survive the learning experience and it took the Potemkin's primaries to seal off that rat's nest."

There was a somewhat thoughtful silence on both ends. Me as I admired how calm I'd managed to stay and hers as she considered the alternatives. In the background, Jenny gave off the particularly toned ping that meant somebody had pulled our Io file. Mrs. Caldwell's eyes dropped as she scanned past something or other and I had a few shrewd guesses as to what she was perusing cursorily.

"Mr. Corbell. Your background says you've done a significant amount of prior work for the UEG…"

Which was all still very classified, hopefully higher than her level. It was part of the reason I'd walked away from Io with one of their Pyros free and clear, and part of the mention that I tried to avoid hearing anything about what the fragments of Humans First were getting up to.

"…and you seem to be the most up to date of anybody I've been able to reach…"

Being out on the cutting edge did that.

"…if this was _your_ facility, what would _you_ do?"

Another easy question that I answered reflexively, a wry note creeping into my voice and expression.

"Ma'am, I guarantee I'd be using a lot more profanity. I admire your restraint."

The image fuzzed a bit as I heard Jenny's familiar cackle inside my brain and Aileen touched two fingers to her forehead before she started laughing, tiredly but honestly.

"After you finished swearing, then. And you'd better believe I got that out of my system in the first couple hours."

"I'd go for it. If the dog whistle fails, you'd have pilots standing by to hopefully take it out before it could put the drones into self-defense. It's the least _bad_ alternative that doesn't require you to compromise what you're doing to help the base."

"All right, Jerome, let me talk to some people and we'll find out the best place to slam-dunk this basketball of yours into our red sands. Two things first, though. There's a PTMC board-level crash-priority maintenance request that hit my desk not long ago…"

Dravis came through! The faint glow of happiness that sprang to life I ruthlessly squashed. He wasn't by any stretch of the imagination my _friend_, he was just the enemy of my enemy and had a vested interest in making sure I succeeded with the immediate problem.

"…and I wanted to see if you knew anything about it. Specifies what looks like an entire set of segmented armor plating, installation services, rearming, refueling, further services at pilot's discretion, overtime and bonuses authorized, for an unspecified craft. I don't have the people to spare right now, so either it got misfiled or it's something to do with you."

Jenny's desk disappeared and she reverted her projected image to a girl of perhaps ten, bouncing up and down in glee.

_*Shopping trip! Shopping trip! Daddy, take me to the military mall, I NEEEEEED a new armored dress…*_

"Ah, yes, it's mine..."

I managed, trying to eyebrow-wave Jenny away without looking ridiculous. How did you say it without sounding like you were bragging? Hell with it.

"…I wound up tangling with the geothermal borer on Mercury and took some damage. Let me send you my condition report."

_*I fell down but it's not bleeding as much anymore. Lady, look at my scabs!*_

Yet another in a long series of unsettling moments with her. Aileen looked down once more as Jenny's sideband data popped up on her terminal and pursed her lips before giving me a frankly appraising look.

"Hate to see the other guy. I'll send this down to Fabrication. We can fuel you, hopefully rearm you, spare the rations, and lift you back to orbit when you come in but unless this all works I don't have the people to swap the armor or strut. You'll have to take it as cargo."

That posed its own set of problems, naturally, but with the reactor full we could make it to the Belt and visit one of the PTMC outposts for the refit. Just like Dad would have done…

"Understood, all I really need is food, water, reactor fuel, a rocket tug and some mild sedatives for the rest of the outsystem run if you've got 'em."

"I'll make that happen regardless. As for the other thing…"

From the way her visage changed, I had a feeling I wasn't going to enjoy it. She had one of those stormfront-oncoming scowls on her uncomplicated face.

"…Understand this…I am completely incapable of expressing just how upset I am with PTMC over this entire disaster, and when the dust settles I will be mobilizing every resource at my disposal to hold everybody involved personally responsible for the losses here and elsewhere. You're a piece of sand in these gears and I understand that…if this gets my yard back under my control, I will vent my spleen on PTMC and be happy with you. If you're blowing smoke up my ass or if this puts me in a worse place than I am right now, this gear of mine will personally grind you into disassociated subatomic ?"

As threats went, it was the threat of an honest person to an honest person. Somebody highly placed with the UEG, even if she was a civilian, could complicate my life quite directly. Jenny was apparently less impressed and—reverting to her usual uniformed self-held up a square placard with "6.7" on it.

_*Take a fucking NUMBER, lady.*_

"You, PTMC, and everybody affected by this will be holding me responsible as the nearest scapegoat, ma'am. I understood that when I took the job—because my folks were at ground zero but more importantly because this _matters_ more than I do."

Jenny held up a placard to me with "0.01" and muttered something about speaking for myself but I could tell her heart wasn't really in it. Best way to deal with a straight-shooter? Shoot straight back. The director's expression changed slightly from 'you insignificant bastard' to 'you poor, magnificent, insignificant bastard' which counted as an improvement and also took some of the wind out of her sails. Nevertheless she rallied well.

"Then we both have reasons to hope this works. I'll get back to you with those coordinates as soon as I have them. Caldwell out."

The video window vanished and Jenny enlarged herself to take its place.

_*Don't you just want to sic her and Hamster on each other?*_

I hadn't much thought of it. I hadn't much thought of Hamster other than with a vague sense of relief in the sense of a memory of a removed splinter.

"What I really want are those sedatives. And a real meal. Something with lots of carbohydrates and some real bulk. Angel hair pasta, white sauce, lemon juice, a little balsamic vinegar, barbeque-grilled chicken breast pieces with a nice honey glaze…"

My stomach rumbled, and Jenny sighed.

_*Rations won't be so bad, will they? I have nothing against fibrous bulky foods, and it's YOUR flightsuit to stress-shit in, I suppose."_

"You have a unique way of reminding me of certain cruel realities."

_*No, no, indulge at Utopia while you can…you can just befoul the bath when you need to. I can't smell you, so what do I care?*_

My turn to sigh in exasperation.

"You'd damn well better give me one gee to hit the can. I can't believe we're seriously discussing this."

_*You think we're strapped for light conversation NOW, wait until we're heading past the Belt.*_

Wasn't often I got to score the game-winning point but…

"Little miss pessimist, now who's assuming we'll survive?"

It actually shut her up for a moment while she gaped at me, raising her hand and opening her mouth to say something but emitting an incongruous beep and fading away into the video window again. Aileen waved off a gaggle of concerned-looking office workers and smirked at me.

"Caldwell here. Got some coordinates for you, Mr. Corbell, and the system-level access to one of our local wide-spectrum emitters. Jet jockeys are up and with a targeting solution on the snow globe…I'd just better not have to tell them to shoot through the heavy cruiser hull that it's currently wandering. Patching them in now. Fellows, you reading little old me down here? I've got Jerome from PTMC on this channel, he'll be fetching you out your target today…then maybe you can even go home."

"Read you, five by five."

"Bangin'. Hey Jerome, where are _you_? C'mon down and get some!"

Came the overlapping voices, if audio only. Youthful, informal, full of aggressive adrenaline like I knew so well. Ignoring Jenny and her exaggerated pelvic-thrusting by way of comment I gave a reasonable answer.

"Heading your way from McQuarrie at 25 gee once I smoke this bastard into the open and don't need my lungs for anything petty like talking. Stand by…"

And did…exactly nothing. Jenny paced a couple times behind the video, nonchalantly whistling into the back of my brain, then giggled and took mercy on me.

_*All right, all right, I'm on it. Into the transmitter…configuring it for the nonstandard parameters.*_

I looked down and pretended to manipulate controls, feeling a bit of a fraud.

_*Maintenance access from he who must not be named, translating my list of demands, saving it as a raw bitstream so nothing tries to fix it before it gets sent…and…broadcasting.*_

Theatrically, I flipped up an imaginary guard, turned an imaginary key, and mashed an imaginary button, glancing back up again.

"It thinks it's working."

"Hey I got movement, confirm?"

"Check, but the coordinates are the other way…hang on, it reversed again…"

Aileen waited, as did I, but not without a question.

"You said it was inside a hull? Can you give them the schematics to overlay on their sensor views?"

"Ah, yeah, hold one."

A fusillade of tapping from her, accompanied with chewing thoughtfully on a slightly protruded tongue, and it wasn't long before we heard the acknowledgements come back.

"Yeah, yeah, got it I think…"

"…Sec six, look at bravo one…two..three…one of those. I track vertical motion, that look like a turbolift to you?…"

"…Try and keep up Johns, yeah, it's dropping down some kind of bigass shaft…."

"…Hey Brian? Shut yo' mouth!"

"I was just talking about the sh…."

There was a certain pregnant pause. Aileen looked puzzled and the voice link clearly transmitted the slap of a palm hitting a helmet. I was trying not to crack up.

"…Johns, swear to god, gonna kick your ass when we get back for that. Uh. We copy vertical movement and…"

"…there it goes, there it GOES!.."

Aileen was starting to smile and I'm sure my own expression was looking a little feral as well. Jenny ostentatiously blew imaginary smoke from her fingertips and went back to whistling. I recognized the new song, so recently referenced, and bit my lip HARD to keep my composure.

"…in the open, progressing to coordinates…got a clear shot, clearance?..."

"…locked, clear to fire?"

The director looked at me. I looked at Jenny…who was holding both thumbs up, standing with one foot on another dynamite plunger. Well, if it was my call.

"Fire!"

Overlapping calls of 'fox four' resounded and duplicated but without seeing what was downrange neither Mrs. Caldwell or I had much of an idea what was going on.

"Splash one snow globe!"

"Copy, no signature on sensors. Transmitting visual."

The big gear of Utopia Planetia looked down at her screen and whooped fullthroatedly like a rioting soccer fan. In the brief silence that followed I heard a few startled curses and the shattering of a distant coffee mug.

"Jerome, you've got to see this…I mean, in your professional opinion is this sufficient…"

The sound of mental machinery reaching high RPM as she searched for how I'd phrased it earlier.

"…ordinance interdiction?"

Her window fuzzed for a moment and I saw a giant thumb. She must've completely dismounted the standard camera and carried it over to view her screen directly, because the slightly shaky image I saw had a coffee ring in the lower corner. Butterscotch-colored rockscapes unfolded beneath a madly puffing purplish sphere and just as it switched off its thrusters and tried to use the ones on the other side of braking—not that it would accomplish that without overshooting—it vanished in a four-strobe orange flash and reappeared as a mass of wreckage tumbling and bounding slowly across the plains, residual velocity added to by the impact of the warheads. There weren't many contiguous pieces. It looked like a fly that had been smashed by a dictionary and thoroughly splattered. The image looped back and I nodded in satisfaction, forgetting she couldn't see me.

"Oh yeah, that's blown the hell up. Brian, Johns, thanks for the fire support. We can get the yards cleaned up now and let you go back to base."

"Just when I was on a first-name basis with the popcorn machine in the lounge…"

Lamented one of them before they signed off the channel and I was looking at Aileen from a somewhat canted view once again. Jenny rotated the window just before the director fixed the tilt herself, leaving me a bit seasick for a moment. She beat me to the first words.

"Now what?"

"Now comes the easy part...if you have anything with PTMC commo gear, like a shuttle."

_*It's all the easy part.*_

"I've got a dinky little console here in my office that does nothing but talk to the drone controller…would that work?"

It wasn't all the easy part.

"Can you find any kind of model number or serial number? Hang on."

Jenny cut the video and I gave her the hairy eyeball for a moment.

"It just occurred to me…we're doing this the slow and stupid way. With the relay up again, why don't we just send out a transmission to all facilities without secondaries? Tell them to run this program, which is your decryption program, on their own hardware instead of going through a local shuttle? We could undo most of the whole fucking Solar System with one broadcast."


	37. Low Bypass

Chapter 37: Low Bypass

"I said, 'Well, what'd I say to piss you off this time, baby?'

She said 'I don't know.' I don't know what my baby's putting down..."

-Willie Mabon

_Sure, I was pleased enough at the controller elimination. Aileen was on his side now and there were lots worse allies. We had a lovely little fix that could be replicated with trivial ease. But…it was such a _simple_ idea. No wonder I hadn't thought of it. I threw up an explosion of fireworks and confetti around my figure and let my pleased surprise show through in my tone of 'voice'._

_*We used the internal systems of the relay to expedite the decrypt, there's no fucking reason we couldn't blow the entire thing over the relay to everything else…"_

_But my enthusiasm began to fade as I thought about the intelligence implications._

_*There's no _practical_ reason not to.*_

"Oh god. Politics again?"

_Silly boy. Life was politics. You had to steer, to nudge, to manage, to create an environment which would maximize probabilities that your targets would make the most useful choices. It was the hubris that toppled civilizations and the 'but I'm different' mentality that made tyrants of good men. I just didn't much care…if there was a hell, I was already bound for it. If not, I'd damn well use every advantage I could bring to bear for Jerome and his little monkey tribe._

_*Put yourself in the place of our saboteur. After your sneaky little move, you're looking forward to watching the worlds burn themselves down. Suddenly the trend reverses. A fix goes out, systemwide, that just happens to be undoing your hard work and doing it with your own language. The troubleshooter's ID has been broadcast. What's your next move?*_

_One of the several endearing things about Jerome was that you could follow an idea through his head by his changing expressions if you caught him off-guard. This time was no exception._

"Arrange a little accident, then start furious damage control. Either try to disappear or bring in the big guns and go double-or-nothing. Or arrange big guns to cover the fadeout. I see your point."

_Finally, some sanity. It was tantamount to suicide, since there were so many avenues to strike at us from…_

"…but I can't just let us sit on this. Love, think of the stakes."

_I'd been thinking of the stakes all along, since after I'd taken the call this…last…whatever morning it'd been. At the time it seemed like such a great idea. Burn off some mutual loss with some profitable destruction. Viking funeral. Followed with a high-dollar informal wake. Then he had to go getting all noble when the full extent of the disaster started peeking through!_

_*Don't we have a big enough bullseye painted on my ducts?*_

"Look, we've got to get Utopia Planetia back and running either way. I'll bounce it off Dravis and let him make the call. I'll be diplomatic and political."

_You'll be territorial and stroppy, because you don't know how to be diplomatic or political, not really, and especially not at Sammy…but I didn't say it. I just sighed and got ready to reestablish contact._

_*I'll be decrypt bitch through the console, then, shall I? Unless the dinky little thing has enough resources to run the program itself. Grocery-list lady in three, two…*_

"There you are. Here's the console."

_The camera view swooped dizzyingly over to the serial plate and a mental crossreference made me groan. It was gonna be like sucking a golf ball through a coffee stirrer…not fast, not pretty, and requiring far too much attention on the suction end. I rolled my eyes but nodded to Jerome, miming a flightstick in my hands._

"Can do but I'll have to steer it from here. Sideband me the login and I'll get the decryption program running."

"Sending it now, do you need me to do anything?"

_If I'd wanted to be a data doctor, I wouldn't've gone to Io! Nevertheless when I heard her credentials, I reached out through the relay to get remote access to the facility with our maintenance pass, then from there ignored the external console entirely and started sweet-talking the controller into accepting a modified internal decrypting program. If I fucked up, I could probably catch it, and if he was really going to suggest this to Dravis then it was obligatory to see if it'd even work. Jerome raised his eyebrows at me but I shook my head as I concentrated on keeping the instructions straight to be fed over. She'd just get in the way._

"Not a thing. This shouldn't take more than five or ten minutes."

_If I'd been working through the console it would've taken about half an hour, but if he was going to fuck up my strategy, I was going to borrow his direct approach._

"Right. When you have any news, holler. Literally. I'll leave this channel active."

_Another swoopy camera movement, abruptly steadying, and we were looking at the back of Mrs. Caldwell's head poking above her slat-framed chair as she went back to her work. Everybody was busy except Jerome. Well, his business was violent trouble, so any time he was idle was generally a positive sign._

_*Change of plan. Running it on the controller because we only tried that on the relay and there were lots more resources to play with.*_

_His eyebrows shot up and he glared at me._

("You were planning on telling me this when?")

_*Right about now.*_

("What's your fallback plan?")

_*If it goes into self-defense mode? Hell, I can always try to lobotomize it remotely. Otherwise you'll have something to do after all.*_

_The fallback plan was to make a lot of excuses and request further ordinance interdiction. I was so impatient to do something, anything, useful that I didn't much care. Working through the relay, I was almost as fast as I'd be if I had a direct line and was confident enough in my ability to head things off that I didn't give it much thought. Didn't mean he wanted to hear it._

("What happened to defense in depth?")

_*What happened to refuge in audacity and velocity?*_

("You know damned well that's for combat!")

_*What do you call ANY of this?*_

("Ninety percent waiting, ten percent terrified adrenaline. Touché. Damn you anyway.")

_*This IS where I went where I died, dear one.*_

("Somewhere between the gutter and the stars. Just…give me something I can hand to Dravis.")

_*If I get to pick, it's a coin toss between a handful of feces or a well-squeezed handful of uranium isotopes.*_

("Which is exactly why you don't get to pick. How's it going?")

_*Faster. A lot faster. Like a good little kid it's busily rewriting itself as fast as the storage will stand up and glue down the bits.*_

_On the relay I'd had to squint and monitor every bit for paranoia's sake. Here I was watching it intently but letting it crawl on its own, and the decrypt was gratifyingly fast, already more than halfway done._

("Speaking of Dravis' assumptions that we've been going along with—like the comm links being down and the invasion force thing—")

_*What now?*_

("Flip this around. You're the cee-whatever-oh of THE biggest corporation in human history. Suddenly something goes badly wrong and after an update is sent out you get anomalies around Charon and your facilities and system relay go dark. You send a scout in, scout goes down. You send in the UEG, they assault hostile drones and the dropship gets taken out, then that facility lights up Brazil. Why do you go right to 'blow it all up' when that worked so well the first time around?")

_I thought and thought on that one. PTMC's officers were rapacious, arguably amoral sociopaths, as you'd expect to find in high office everywhere, but they weren't _stupid_. With the facts at my disposal I could only see murky logic to that end result._

_*It's not a decision you'd make lightly…with the UEG baying for blood. Nationalizing Post-Terran wouldn't be the best move and it might be a better idea to let them clean up their own mess if they can…a 'if you don't take out these facilities, we will' ultimatum. No wonder Dravis looks like hell every time we see him, right now your progress reports and procedure may be the only things standing between the __Potemkin__ and all PTMC's facilities.*_

_Jerome snorted audibly at that one and I could see Aileen pause and cock her head before shrugging and going back to work._

("You'd think he'd be happier to hear from us, then.")

_Well that one was easy enough._

_*And what if you're WRONG? What if this doesn't work? Quite apart from the practical recovery, PTMC and the UEG are still going to tear everything apart bit by bit, they WILL be trying to replicate my results on the hardware you claimed you ran, the wheels of justice will be grinding exceedingly fine. They can't just call this a 'rogue update', they'll have to trace their own saboteur internally and either hand somebody over or hand over a trail to the UEG's investigative forces—who will ream PTMC's secret dirty laundry wider than an elephant raping a mouse unless some really rampant corruption has to take place at some fascinatingly high levels, which will have its own knock-on consequences…*_

_A fresh reorganization was better than coffee. The entire mess ran on and on and up and out, great glittering wheels of filthy consequences, human action-reactions interlocking up and up and out of my comprehension, but when I was feeling sharp I could see a lot further and a lot clearer. Not that I could take my eyes off the rewrite as it finished up and obediently executed a full power-off restart. The controller dropped out of visibility and after a few moments I tried the connection again, watching the hardware initialization messages scroll across the back of my mind._

("So this is a mixed blessing because now there's an audit trail?")

_*And nobody can simply beg the UEG for money to rebuild—of course with little oversight- because PTMC's far too vital to be let die, even if they had to blow up most of their facilities. Yeah, you shit on somebody's sweet little ideal resolution and for a large paycheck, so PTMC's gunning for you. The UEG will want to extensively debrief you under any number of interesting drugs, and we can't have that, so they're not exactly on your side either. The public will want to know why you didn't save more lives, somehow, the military is probably fuming at the slowness of this response and I don't know how far the goodwill of one Colonel will get you…and don't forget there's my countryman or countrymen lurking around. And everybody knows what I sound like.*_

("I'm just going to stop talking to you now.")

_*And you wonder why I've been riding your ass about getting out of the solar system? Controller just came up, looks good from here. Let me have it print out a report and force a drone programming refresh.*_

_We had to keep moving if we wanted a chance to survive any of this, and something as simple as a spray of rocks in our path would, with our velocity, smear that chance right away. A few shouts at the controller just to make sure it'd hear and obey, and Mrs. Caldwell whipped around in her chair at the sound of the printer, nearly overbalancing with reflexes still apparently keyed to somewhere else's gravity. Jerome managed to stop goggling at me long enough to pull on his company face._

"Got your controller back, Mrs. Caldwell, and I told it to pull in all the drones for a reprogramming to correct safety parameters. Can you verify they're coming in?"

"Looks good, Jerome. They're heading in at a reckless speed but I take it that's a vestige of the old programming. I can let you know in just a couple minutes."

"Please do, the controller reprogram isn't new but this is the first real feedback I'll have for drone response."

_As hard as that was to believe. MN00012 was a ratfuck and we'd erased all evidence. Tycho was a ratfuck and we'd called in arty to erase all evidence. The Mercury power installation was a ratfuck and we'd blown holes in all the evidence. McQuarrie didn't have any drones. Oh, for complete data._

"Right, I'll keep the channel open again if anything nasty starts to happen."

_At which point I would leap into action and curse. For now I could at least check our private message store for the first time since the initial cattle call._

_*Oh, you'll love this…news agencies all over the system wanting a comment on this, on that. How do you want me to handle it?*_

_This I wanted to hear. Publicity had been hashed over time and time again between us and I had no real sense for it. There were arguments for staying incognito, there were arguments for going public. He'd played mum on McQuarrie so…_

("Send 'em _all_ our good profile shot…")

_Jerome, in jumpsuit, arms crossed but smiling, lounging against the most photogenic angle possible for the spaceframe's nose. I liked it, the wingtip cannons were in the corner of the shot so it almost looked like I was hugging him between stubby wing and blunt nose._

("…and the following message, from you-as-secretary. 'Mr. Corbell much regrets that he is not available for comment at this time, having been exclusively engaged by PTMC for an extensive troubleshooting contract. He will be happy to respond to all inquiries with the appropriate level of information upon his return.' Endquote. That leaves us some options, yes?")

_It left me some wiggle room and kept them on the hook quite nicely. Rumors would leak…from servicemen and servicewomen on the __Potemkin__ or from Tycho itself, from reporters, from Hannah and from the rescues, from Tawny and Quentin. Enough plausible holes that Dravis couldn't banish us entirely out of sight and out of mind. With a nasty little mutter I recorded the message…oh-so-sweetly, of course…and began the tedious process of copying all those network addresses into one single multicast transmission. Hell, let them all see each other's inquiries. It'd do no harm. I had just metaphorically shot my data wad when Caldwell cleared her throat inquisitively toward the pickup and Jerome arched an eyebrow to show he was listening._

"Looks like you'll have a refit crew after all, the drones are back in control. Can I trust them?"

_The $65,536 question that nobody quite knew the answer to. Jerome dodged it neatly._

_"_I understand my boss is dispatching a team of data analysts to every affected facility to ensure everything is back on track. I have to let him know that the dog-whistle is effective so I'll mention you need a team as well."

_She grinned charmingly into the pickup._

"Oh, don't bother with that. Pass me his number and I'll talk to him myself. Have to follow up on this maintenance request anyway. You're due a few compliments—you're the only PTMC face that's played straight with me—and I have to start the ass-chewing somewhere."

_Jerome's turn to grin, once again baring the tips of his canines inadvertently. I wasn't far behind._

"Much appreciated. I'll be more than happy to give you that number…Samuel Dravis reports directly to the board. It'll be nice to have some merde roll uphill for once, pardon my French."

_It was only right, only fitting. I immediately slugged our boss' contact information over the channel sideband. Aileen jotted it down onto something just out of sight with a nod._

"There's a good sized pile here to dig the yard out from under. We're going to be busy as anything. When are you arriving?"

_Like Jerome had an electronic orrery in his head? _

_*What's two and a quarter AUs between friends? Call it a little under a _day _in the fucking bath, there's only so much I can do even at five internal. Space is big.*_

"Ugh! Call it twenty-four hours, perhaps a smidge less. You wouldn't happen to have any PTMC property there that'll do better than x5?"

_Mrs. Caldwell's mouth pursed somewhat sympathetically._

"Not a thing. Nothing I can let you borrow either, no matter what your clearance."

_Not that it would make a difference. I did some quick numbers from Mars to Pluto as a little worst-case estimate and it didn't look good. Three and a half days in the bath! A quicker courier at x6 would shave all of 10 hours off that and couriers were all engine and no real storage anyway. The older capital ships managed x8 but their spaceframes could only handle a maximum of 8 to 16 G of loading to begin with, making it a moot point. Significant UEG hardware—like those big ugly saucers—managed to handle a lot more but they had some kind of super-secret way of reinforcing their structural integrity so they didn't turn into a crumpled beer can under their own inertia every time the skipper wanted full steam. All I'd heard was that it involved some sort of force field and took a lot of power to run, and I didn't want to get Jerome his very own firing squad by risking digging to deep. Pity the boy couldn't handle a modest 500 Gs…we could get to Pluto in six hours. As a cloud of disassociated scrap, because I wouldn't handle it either. I was beginning to seriously think about the logic of doing the decryption locally, the relay could hit every facility in the solar system without pesky light-speed lag. Might even be able to take care of the situation in the Belt…but that bore further discussion. My course projection for this run to Mars ran us right past Mercury at what, for interplanetary distances, was pretty much pissing range…but I didn't see fit to mention it. Not if we'd be hunting asteroids in the Belt shortly afterward. _

"Never hurts to ask. All right, I'll talk to Sam and let him know you'll be calling. Been a pleasure dealing with you, ma'am, I'll shout at approach control when I'm in range."

"Appreciate the painless solution, Jerome. See you when you get in."

_Another connection bit the dust. The boy rubbed his temples frustratatedly._

"A day? Really?"

_*I can only _bend_ the laws of physics.*_

"It's not the laws of physics, it's my damn bones that feel like they're getting bent."

_*Far be it from me to stifle your basketball ambitions.*_

"Too old. Too used to sitting on my ass and playing with my stick."

_*Playing with MY stick, thanks.*_

"Which raises the usual awkward questions. Bah. If I can banter I'm doing OK. Anything I need to know before I talk to Sam again?"

_*Hell if I know. I established these things can rewrite themselves on the fly and that we can pull in secondary controllers with standard signaling, suitably corrupted. But you'd still need a team on site to zot the little bastards.*_

_Jerome stood, twisting left and right with a fusillade of crackling from his shoulders that I internally cringed to hear._

"Can't we just put a set of recall coordinates to outer space or somewhere further away than propellant stores would take it? Straight up?"

_The image wasn't unappealing. Something futilely striving for altitude, in any number of poisonous atmospheres or some thin enough to let it possibly attain escape velocity…or, more likely, crashing down to ruin when the meager internal reserves ran out._

_*Much as I'd like to suggest we let the primary reprogram the secondary back to sanity, then the fixed secondary would run into the corrupted primary and freak out. And we'd be relying on compromised code to get that far. It's not a bad idea for places where the secondary could either puff out into impotence or be decisively smashed. Otherwise it's boots-on-the-ground.*_

"I'll be sure to mention it. Dammit, Jenny, I'm doing my best to escalate us right out of this gig."

_*And you've done a fantastic job, my love. Shall I summon the weasel?*_

"Please. Sooner I get this call over with, sooner I can eat something and get in the damn bath again. Never thought I'd be getting sick of good steaks."

_*Hold that thought. Dravis coming up.*_

_A single alert tone and the video came to life, projected over the atmosphere-flight throwback window in the cockpit. Dravis was turned away from the pickup, staring out his own window and apparently down at Earth. His suit coat hung on the back of the chair and his pale arms protruding from a wrinkled white shirt betrayed that he didn't get much time outside. The matching tone on his end had him whirl around to face the pickup, but with a suitably composed expression._

"Ah, Material Defender, I trust you have another installment of unsettling data?"

_And there went Jerome, reflexively bristling. The signs were small but if you knew him, evident._

"Utopia Planetia is back under local control. It is possible to remotely summon the secondary controllers into a free-fire zone. It is also possible for the corrupted facilities to decrypt themselves with no outside hardware required. My recommendation has changed since the last time we talked."

_If anybody asked me, I was still in favor of broad-spectrum annihilation, but I was bloody-minded like that lately. Dravis tented his fingers and leaned forward._

"Do continue."

"Simply put…divide corrupted facilities into three primary categories, each receiving a different treatment. First category-normal locations with no secondary controllers. I will send you a transmission under the supplied maintenance ID that will cause these to decrypt themselves internally and report back with full status. In the case of facilities that do not report back, ground intervention will be required."

_And did I ever not want to do that. Obediently I put together a generic record of my broadcast with a few internal identifiers that should recognize wherever it was applied and fill in the blanks to suit, and slugged that back over the relay._

"I see that transmission now. I will relay it down to the security team for immediate dispatch through our regular system update procedure…"

_Red flag! I flashed a literal example up across the screen and the text 'NO: Suspect initial sabotage' across Dravis' face. Jerome held up a finger, shaking his head._

"Have you definitively established that the division that handles updates was not the one which introduced the initial corrupted update, or where the sabotage initially occurred? A trivial change here could result in setting _all_ the facilities in intruder-defense mode."

_Sam's eyebrows writhed and drew together, like reversed footage of severing an earthworm. Begrudgingly he sighed assent._

"Very well, I will present it directly to the Board. The next category?"

_Some part of me was surprised they hadn't gotten into it yet._

"Next category is facilities with secondary controllers and operating in either vacuum, low atmosphere, drone gravity, or external conditions hostile to secondary controllers within the time frame of their internal propellant reserves. These facilities would receive a transmission that I will send along now—with coordinates altered for local conditions, to send the secondaries out to deep space or other certain doom, beyond range of their communication abilities and beyond range of their propellant stores to return to the facility. Following that neutralization, you'd send out the recovery transmission."

_Dravis nodded impassively, crossing his arms in front of him. It seemed he'd had the chance to sleep and recover from yesterday's weaknesses. Making him annoyingly harder to read, natch. Obediently I compiled what I'd used, blanked out the locations and wrote a brief note in a separate file explaining the encoding pattern and location, and slugged it back along the long subspace trip to Shiva._

"Recovery is uneconomical?"

"Prioritize, Dravis. Unless you wanna rely on code that doesn't acknowledge you as the boss, there's no way to save the mines and the secondaries."

"Yes, yes, Material Defender. Spare us both the inevitable sarcastic jibes regarding the initially-discussed plan. As your kind's aphorism states, it did not survive contact with the enemy."

_Awkward. Who _was_ the enemy here? Another Rihannsu, somewhere, but we hadn't run into them…just a few traces and playing clean-up for their mess. This was solidly in the plot-foiling and not villain-confronting stages…and I still couldn't see how to move on._

"Speaking of contact, the third category is facilities where secondary controller commanded suicide is impractical. I recommend…"

_There was a pause while he thought and Dravis waited him out._

"…It'd have to be local intervention. If the UEG or your other corporate security squads…or mercs…can potshot these things then you can reclaim faster. Quicker they're knocked out, quicker you get your toys back."

_Tenuous arguments ran through the back of my mind for doing it at the source. I'd have to encode a transmission to blare 'hey, assholes, scan for this thing and shoot it'—two problems, the consoles wouldn't respond to their input anyway and it assumed somebody was alive and competent. Then I'd have to piggyback instructions for sending out an acknowledgement, which also relied on success._

"A very tidy shifting of responsibilities indeed. Shall we discuss the situation in the Belt?"

Jerome rolled his eyes but for once didn't rise to the baiting.

"Why, do continue."

_Much._

* * *

_Author's note: Space is fracking big. Also internal logic dogpiling on itself means that some of D2's opening may be appearing a lot sooner than I'd thought. As much as it may not seem evident at this point, this is all building toward a remarkably sudden D1 climax. Which comes as a surprise to me-apart from some specific background research for particulars, as with any good yarn the author can roughly plot out the trajectory and let the character ballistics unfold as they will. In this case, however, the acceleration and speed of the plot projectile isn't apparent until a fixed milestone flashes by MUCH sooner than expected._

_And yes, I half-apologize for the Shaft joke in the preceding chapter. Obviously popular culture would be widely divergent from ours from about 1945 onward (see also swearing and measurement assumed equivalency in fiction)...but given that the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s would've been happening in the 1950s and 1960s I don't think a universe-homologue is so very unlikely. That, however, is simple justification for 'if it surprises the author and makes him laugh, it stays'._


	38. Of Course Recalculating

Chapter 39: Of Course; Recalculating

"Hey, ho, we'll go, anywhere the wind is blowing _(should have took the train!)_

...sailing for adventure on the bounding main."

-Jim Henson

With a moue of irritation Dravis shrugged away my jibe and continued as prodded.

"Since the relay returned to operational status…"

Since Jenny fixed the relay! How quickly everything got flipped into humanity-negating passive voice.

"…among the backlog of communications of an urgent nature were a series of distress calls and progress reports from a freighter at our drone factory in the belt. The reference file provided lists it as MR3551."

That sounded like a cue for Jenny, and she overlaid a schematic of the factory. As with so many of these places, it looked like an explosion in the spaghetti aisle when you saw it in corridor-overlapping wireframe. I couldn't make sense of any of it with a quick glance other than noting a particularly virulent shade of pulsing purple that she'd used to call attention to a number of shaft exits from some large sublevel.

"I copy Mike, Roger, numbers three five five one. That doesn't sound like a production code."

It sounded like a military code, using the oh-so-subtle PTMC facility naming scheme, and Dravis nodded.

"Due to the nature of some drones that are produced and tested, the UEG required it be classified as a military research facility."

Oh, that sounded fantastic. Jenny's little image on the 'window'—oddly flattened, as I was getting used to the display walls or my helmet-was shaking her head and holding up pictures of wicked looking guns and armor thicknesses. I waved her off, there'd be plenty of time to hash it all out when we were enroute.

"Fantastic. Which category is it?"

"Three. Or it would not be brought up at this juncture. Normally I would have you report to processing station Sumner for escort and insertion but…"

_*But we're not fucking combat-ready?*_

"…due to external time pressures and the ongoing decryption of our facilities being ready to put into production, PTMC can no longer afford the time your little junket to Mars will consume."

Little junket my little patience left! This time Jenny bared her teeth, which made me have to bite my lip to keep my grin back.

"Space is big, Dravis. Budget won't change that. Unless you have a way of getting faster hardware to me and incidentally getting me combat-ready again…"

Not that I was relishing a fucking day in the bath, mind, but to have less than Earth gravities at the end of that and proper food and water, for at least a few hours…right now it sounded like a choice slice of Heaven.

"As it happens, Material Defender…the situation has deteriorated considerably."

_*And here I thought we were making progress.*_

"I haven't used my time in the gravitic bath to catch up on news feeds. Sum up, if you'd be so kind."

"Nationalization."

_*Oh SHIT.*_

Jenny echoed what I was thinking, loudly enough that it seemed Dravis could hear me. He smiled thinly, inhumanly, and I wondered if I'd spoken it after all.

"Now that I have your attention, Mr. Corbell? The UEG has expressed a great deal of concern about the unacceptable timeframe our recovery efforts are taking."

"But…"

"Spare me the pointless self-aggrandizory egotism, 1032. In facts that I cannot spin and you cannot shoot, this three-category solution may be an alternative that they will accept! This is, of course, entirely independent of the forthcoming investigation."

I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Jenny shook her head disbelievingly in the background.

"Your current progress is insufficiently rapid for both PTMC and the UEG to condone, even acknowledging you are operating at the limits of the spaceframe you have commandeered and human endurance limits. Assurances of full control over the situation are being demanded of us in the strongest terms and with the shortest deadlines."

"Dravis, I can't _do_ this any faster…"

Unexpectedly, he leaned into the pickup, eyes slitted with pure reptilian hatred, and hissed at me.

"Shut. Up. For once close your mouth and _listen_. We are having difficulty obtaining your specified hardware. We cannot replicate your cryptographic results. I am sending our earlier conversation regarding a relay-based fix—verbatim-to the judge advocate general of the military, to PTMC's board of directors, and to the governing body of the UEG _now_. I am using every trick I know to keep the UEG from outright commandeering you and your ship until you discharge your obligations to us. You are not slipping away that easily."

The poor asshole Jenny had laid the crypto finger on was probably in hiding. With PTMC beating down his door and mentioning my name, in their 'all other considerations are irrelevant' urgency mode…yeah, being on the other end of that would take some time to distinguish from an outright armed assault, be it from UEG forces or law enforcement or a private grudge-holder in some capacity or another. That trail would buy us a little time but put the focus harder on us in the meanwhile. As far as my words being immediately disseminated to the movers and shakers…I cast my mind back. How much of an asshole had I been? How badly had I phrased things? Dravis hadn't been flapping his gums at the initial briefing when he said I'd earn recognition but this wasn't the kind I wanted! I could see him tap-tap-tapping away at his terminal when he leaned back, but I kept my mouth closed for the time being. Maybe we could pry something useful out of his being rattled.

_*And there goes plausible deniability. What the hell does he want us to do about any of this?*_

("Fuck me sideways if I know. This was supposed to be a straightforward jaunt to Mars, then the Belt, then play it by ear outsystem.")

_*This was SUPPOSED to be a tunnel clusterfuck with a monumental paycheck. I'm so far out of my depth…*_

Nothing like hearing her admit it to send the cold rivulets down my spine and make me bristle. Samuel finally finished whatever he was doing and looked back in my direction with a certain glint in his eye that presaged something very unpleasant in my future.

"In any case, you are now the sharp end of our own investigation. Far from the initial blunt troubleshooter I believed would be required, you have inveigled your way into a position of undeserved importance….and you are sharp on _both_ ends. As a result you are the frankly appallingly thin veil between the full wrath of Earth's government and PTMC, even though attempting to manage you is precisely as satisfying and pleasant as nailing manure to a wall. Your amended target list follows…one facility only that cannot be handled by local forces. MR3551. Confirm receipt of ephemeris."

Jenny went ping, but quietly, and rolled her eyes at me, flashing up an overlay of the Solar system. We were _here_, still outbound from Venus. With an inward groan I noted how close we'd passed to Mercury again. The asteroid production facility was…elsewhere. Completely across the solar system. It would take…well, Jenny did the numbers. But time that Dravis apparently couldn't afford. Where the hell were we supposed to resupply?

"Yeah, yeah, I got it. What the hell do I use for fuel, armor, ammo, missiles, air, food, and _time_?"

"We operate resupply stations in the Belt."

"Valhallas. Yes. I'm familiar with them. _Don't_ tell me that they're corrupted."

Mom and Dad had had to shop at the company store, of course. Charged for oxygen, charged for fuel, charged for consumables, charged for maintenance, and not allowed to undock and go back to prospecting unless the hopelessly obsolete ship was up to PTMC specs…or the inspector took their cut. Dad would probably have still been out there, trying to scrape enough past the precisely-calculated skimming to retire, if it wasn't for Mom and a very, very lucky find of a diamond-cored asteroid. While the place had a lousy reputation among the miners, nevertheless a Valhalla _was_ the convenient outpost of civilization—with every delight available if you had the credits and weren't reduced to already-breathed air, cardboard-flavored nutrient mush, and dingy holograms of dubious resolution and anatomical possibility.

"They are closest to administrative facilities in operation and thus unaffected by the rogue patch. The remote asteroid processing stations are being dealt with. There is a Valhalla an acceptable distance from you. Confirm receipt of ephemeris."

Jenny opened her mouth and went ping, musically, changing her map. I read the 'six hours' with a grimace but it beat the HELL out of eleven one way.

"I'm looking at the plot now. All right, send that Utopia maintenance request onward, but that's not going to save that much time."

Dravis steepled his fingers together, smirking over them at me in the familiar fashion that meant I was about to be shit on from a great height…again.

"You will find that it enables you to save an acceptable amount of time…"

_*Acceptable to who, exactly?*_

"…and you should be quite pleased to note that with the neutralization of the last corrupted facility, you will have completed your contract."

Now that was way too good to be true. My eyebrows lifted in disbelief as Dravis continued, artificial praise saccharine on his lips.

"After all, your patch has enabled recovery of the affected facilities on the initial list, and you have been instrumental in organizing an examination of both the cause and the cure. All that would remain would be a formal debriefing back at Shiva to explain some of your more unusual comments and results. The UEG may also want to speak to you regarding your findings, naturally we would release you from your confidentiality agreement as a sign of good faith."

There was always a fucking hook and there it was. The carrot on the stick. Nevertheless, if prompted, I was pretty sure I could BS my way through it well enough to get us paid and then outbound in a hurry. Things were looking up, finally.

"If Hannah can do it, I can do it…"

His expression of distaste—for once not directed at me—told me quite eloquently that she'd gotten back to Shiva and unleashed herself in the typical fashion. Jenny laughed in the background, a speculative throaty chortle that ended far too soon.

"…Indulge my curiosity, then. Why me at the drone factory? Why not local forces?"

Dravis looked like he was trying to suck a lime.

"MR3551 is a….significant production facility. Highly significant. The investment involved was comparable to the Mercury project and command station. Or if you prefer—other places that you have dealt with and left significantly more intact—the relay or Utopia Planetia's shipyards."

_*Which I digitally mugged…and the drones already sorta wrecked. We do have less than a stellar high-dollar-value record.*_

("Yeah, but they're still there. More or less working and salvageable. No further disruptions in service.")

Pieces were starting to assemble, so to speak, and it made me happy.

"It's your ONLY drone production facility, isn't it? That far out of the ecliptic, it's easy to defend, hard to get to. Not feasible to replace with the economic hit that you're gonna take from all of this, so you can't reprogram it then order it to blow the reactor before the secondary can cause any problems. You have a severely overegged basket."

OK, so I was starting to smirk a bit too. I was sharp on both ends, as he'd said, and if he was going to twist the knife I could damn well twist back a little. One last critically important cleanup, and he'd have to tell me just why it was us on the hook instead of farming it out to PTMC goons. His neutral expression came on far too suddenly and was far too cracked to be anything more than a deliberate attempt to return to an even keel.

"Faberge, Material Defender. You have the agility, firepower, background, experience, and appropriate discretion to reclaim the factory without functionally destroying it."

_*Something's wrong here. I need a minute with you.*_

Say what you like, I knew where my priorities were.

"Hold that thought, something's come up."

Jenny obligingly suspended video and audio, appearing to point her finger at me and waggle it thoughtfully.

"What's on your mind, love?"

_*This is fishy. He's pushing way too hard.*_

"For once I can't exactly blame him…"

_*Yeah yeah yeah. Look, we can recover that place without setting foot one in there. I already translated the maintenance move order. If the place can make drones from raw materials, you know there's a ton of destructive shit. Torches, induction furnaces, testing areas for all those nasty little weaponized tools. I can tell it to take a long walk off a short plank no problem if I can get a full schematic.*_

"What happened to not wanting to trust code that wasn't under PTMC control?"

She raspberried me expressively enough, shrugging.

_*If these fuckers start poking around in a language they don't grok then I can't be held responsible for what happens.*_

Something was a little off with that statement.

"You're not going to be held responsible no matter what…but since I'm the one in the hot seat I appreciate the distinction. Can you do it?"

_*Ye of little faith. Through the relay, yes, but that's got my signature all OVER it.*_

"I also appreciate the concern…but our fingerprints are all the hell over every last piece of this solution. Sammy even admitted PTMC hadn't been able to duplicate the results."

_*You think I let that mention of debriefing or commandeering go unnoticed? You're ass-deep in alligators and I'm, I think, worse.*_

It had been a while since she last presented me with a choice mental image and I spent a quality few seconds with my imagination, not much liking the results.

"Look, if it handles the place, it's a quick refit run to Valhalla, PTMC's 'happy'…"

Air quotes seemed mandatory on a phrase like that, given the externalities.

"…and we're done, and we can figure out how to dodge the debrief and get out, far far out. Everybody's happy as much as either of us care and we can figure out what to do with the gigantic pile of money. It's the light at the end of the tunnel."

_*It's not even a train, it's a missile. Maybe I can outrun it…anyway, you spin the response and I'll back you up either way. If it gets us out of this fucking nightmare in one piece I'm all for it. I'm just saying that if anything's already on alert over that way, sticking your face into PTMC's ONLY drone production facility may not be smart. It's big. It's lethal. And there's any number of nasty little accidents just waiting to happen."_

"You've always been good at ducking and weaving but this, I think, is your most triumphant moment to date."

She colored a bit at that, slightly greenish which prompted me to tap the screen with a frown. Something must be slightly amiss with the calibrations.

_*You say that every time. Ready to make your call?*_

I'd been ready to pull my dick out of the meatgrinder ever since I'd stuck it in, and now with a plausible end in sight…hell, even if we didn't get the resupply at Valhalla, if I was clocked out of this damn thing—after having saved the solar system!—we could press on to Utopia Planetia, ditch the yacht, resupply on PTMC's blank check and Aileen's gratitude…and anger…and take the comfortable route to wherever.

"Hell yes!"

For once I _wanted_ to talk to Dravis. His face came back up on the screen, looking somewhere else than at the pickup and evidently addressing somebody else. The quick lip-reading that Jenny plastered across the bottom of the window read "…legal extension? No, an empty telemetry channel is _impossible_…" before he looked up again and turned his full attention to me. Lucky me.

"No unexpected disasters, I trust?"

"What would you say if I said I could let you reclaim the asteroid facility from there?"

"I would ask you what the confidence level was, what support you needed, and what aftereffects I would have to spend a considerable number of hours mitigating. I would also be very receptive to details of the plan. This assumes, of course, that your phrasing is usefully rhetorical instead of procrastinatingly hypothetical."

I was going to use some of the money to buy a punching bag that looked like Sam D. It was going to see all of my anger, stress, and frustration, and the video would be sent to him titled simply 'debriefing'. Jenny might want to get her licks in as well, but I'd have to figure out how to let her explode sand into glass without getting me in police trouble or dirtying up the hangar too badly or with too many concerns about overpenetration.

"Just as high as I have in all other decryption attempts, detailed plans of the facility with a special emphasis on dangerous areas, and potential slight facility damage, and yes. Respectively."

Not respectfully. The difference was comprehensive. Dravis pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"Clarify on all points. What do you envision?"

Deep breath. Time to sell it…although it'd sell itself. Once again I hung my entire faith on Jenny. She made a damn good faith hook. One of these days it might all go smash, but…not today. Probably not tomorrow. Repeat every day.

"The facility should have conditions appropriate for you to propagate the secondary-suicide order as discussed. This would mean no need for direct localized fire."

"…thereby moving it from category three to category two…"

My blank look must've given me away. Jenny giggled quietly in the back of my mind, which almost tickled, and Dravis sighed.

"…Really, Mr Corbell, you presented these so neatly to me so few minutes ago."

"I'm not the organizational type…if I make plans for other people, I give them to those other people to execute so I don't HAVE to keep remembering them."

"On the whole I find that having an internal memory is more reliable than outsourcing one's thinking…but, back to the topic at hand, what did you mean by 'slight facility damage', should you remember?"

He just hadn't had the benefit of a proper external backup. Or the benefit of a good woman. Or man. Or tree. Or farm animal. Or whatever. I took a moment to try and picture what sort of lass would hitch herself to a tie-noosed venom-tongued bureaucratic backstabber like that and then remembered that even gold-diggers usually had some standards. Nothing would be worth coming home to _that_.

"Ah yes. That legendary PTMC reliability. Sorry, it had rather slipped my mind under these working conditions. I mean that I think the secondary could be easily vectored into active construction equipment. Induction furnaces, drones being tested…as long as you don't mind the results if it, say, detonates its propellant in a furnace or blunts the claws of a drone like the one that got mister St. Jon. 1031. My predecessor that you mentioned this morning…as you'll recall."

Jenny had flashed up the name, and the ID, but I remembered just fine on my own. Knowing just how the poor bastard before you got theirs wasn't something to outsource, it was something to chew on and try to avoid making the same mistakes. Plus if I could eviscerate him in the bargain….well, either way I was gonna get paid. And once the big moments of terror and satisfaction faded away, the little moments of personal triumph were the ones that warmed you while you lounged on the beach sipping a proper mojito and ogling the flesh on display.

"Your preference for destruction instead of an arbitrary outsystem vector?"

"Never turn your back on an implacable foe."

_*If they go for their fists, go for the bottle. If they go for the bottle, go for the chair. If they go for the chair, go for the gun. If they go for the gun, go for backup. If they go for backup, go to the authorities. If they go for the authorities, go elsewhere. If they go elsewhere…*_

I finished the mantra in the back of my mind, never sure whether it was half-aloud or not.

("…that's what homing missiles are for…")

Dravis was eyeing me strangely.

"And yet you see no issues with assigning other secondary controllers a neutralizing vector?"

Hell, that one was obvious.

"You've got TIME there. Work out how long it'll take for the controllers to get out of range or destroyed once you transmit that signal. Bake that into the plan you shove down the throat of the board and UEG….it gives you a precise timeline. Send maintenance orders, wait until the last controller should be out of range, add a finagle factor, send the recovery transmission. Serve some drinks around the table while you wait for the status reports to come pouring in. It seems obvious enough to me and I'm no master of planning."

Dravis lifted an eyebrow at me, tapping his fingers on the desk as if I spoke Morse.

"An elegantly rapid technical solution indeed, Defender, but there is one factor you have neglected to take into consideration…the CTO's son and two UEG representatives are aboard the captured freighter."

Jenny's projected eyes widened and she slapped her forehead, resulting in a cartoonish explosion of her entire skull. _*It's always the little things, isn't it?*_

"I can only take into account what you bother to TELL me about, Dravis. What, exactly, is the problem?"

"Absolutely maddening, isn't it, Mr. Corbell?..."

I was gonna kill him. I was gonna shred the real thing, not a commissioned punching bag. One lousy Vulcan round, like Jenny had half-offered. Right through that damned window. It was maddeningly precisely because he was _right_….but it was still infuriating. No wonder he had an office off the beaten path and far up enough in space to be safe from outraged underlings like me.

"…nevertheless as I alluded to earlier, we have been unable to duplicate your ECM's translation routines. The CTO feels that a…how did he put it…'canned attempt' would not be appropriate."

But it was OK for all the processing stations with more lives at stake? I knew Jenny didn't much care at all. It was a hell of a strain to be the only one sparing a thought—and a fair bit of guilt—for all the little guys.

"I sympathize with his plight…"

In a manner of speaking, because his wish was my fate.

"…is there any reason, based in hardware or software, to believe that MR351 will pose any more difficulty than, say, the relay? Or the Tycho outpost?"

"You are suggesting a serious attempt to sell him on what he has explicitly spoken against?"

_*Pfft. It's different when it's your own. Where was this urgency when he was calling the station rosters acceptable casualties?*_

"I am suggesting a live intervention via the relay. It can be done in realtime with him on the line…or the crew of the freighter if they are answering transmissions. Especially after prior successful reclamations, I see no reason it wouldn't go well again."

_*You are a disgusting publicity hound.*_

("If it means we don't have to actually go there in person, I'm all for it.")

_*The whole idea of 'off the radar' just slips in one ear and out the other, doesn't it?*_

("Fucked either way. We need all the allies we can get, remember? And we also need to get paid.")

_*I've my doubts.*_

"You understand the risks involved?"

Did I…I bit back the first four things to come to mind.

"If the CTO's kid gets waxed on a live broadcast, you mean? Look, best-faith efforts here. Personal intervention is going to take a lot more time. Is the situation stable enough to wait until I get out there?"

He'd been yammering about distress calls but hadn't bothered to hand over any useful information that might have come from them. I figured he could be on the hot seat for a while more. The slight widening of his eyes suggested that things had already unfolded in a time-sensitive fashion.

"Material Defender, _how_ high is your confidence interval in this process?"

"Hell, Sam, it's worked so far. What kind of pissant question is that? If you're getting cold feet _now_ then you'd better get local forces moving double-quick. And have a damn good explanation, since I'm four for four."

"Two for four. You obliterated the science station and dramatically failed to secure the Tycho outpost without UEG assistance…which is directly part of the current urgency of concern."

"And the shipyards and relay are still intact. You've already lost mercs on this job, don't try to tell me there's no learning curve! I don't have a percentage for you but if I didn't think it would work again I wouldn't be suggesting it. …Why?"

"Proof of concept. Between the in-situ UEG representatives, our board, and highly placed external representatives, there should be a suitable audience assembled for the little…_demonstration…_you are going to give."

No pressure.

_Author's note: Progress has slowed down. A familiar person has rejoined the household, bearing familiar pet, and I am dealing with integration struggles, an impending move to a real apartment, financial affairs, and lastly an invasion of two-inch-plus cockroaches (and yellowjackets) in this 400-square-foot cabin. There's not a lot of time to strap on the cans, slug down the Dew, and get churning...and when I do feel that muse, roaches ambling around my feet or huge flying hate machines suddenly appearing in front of me tend to spark more primitive survival reflexes than 'must finish the chapter' and do a dandy job of dissipating the spark._

_That said I really did intend to do the third secret level in D1...I really did. But I couldn't find an internally consistent reason that it would be different from an normal facility and thus a reason that it would NEED to be handled locally. I feel somewhat guilty that internal logic is eroding away a great deal of gameplay but Descent fans will note that endings and beginnings haven't been touched on yet. Dravis' snark contains two very important bits of foreshadowing. The pace will be picking up. 'Boss' encounters, a little human tragedy at a volatiles mine, and what could possibly be at a Valhalla that would expedite outsystem transport? _


End file.
